這一場豪雨，我躺在床上的時候想。
一夜沒有睡踏實，雨打在玻璃上的聲音，仿佛就在枕邊，沒完沒了地響著。大風一陣陣吹過院子，被樹木壓製得像在憤怒地呻吟。
反正睡不著，我幹脆就專心聽雨，落在涼亭鋪設的石磚上麵，響動不似敲打窗戶那樣清脆，但聲勢很大，也能夠辨別得出石磚之間的水窪，有水去碰撞水，竟然像兵刃去碰撞兵刃，帶著鋼鐵的淩厲。
想起幾樣雨中的往事來。
小孩子好像都愛吃雨，仰起臉用舌頭接幾滴，其餘的都打在臉蛋上。雖然爸爸媽媽說雨水不幹淨，還是要抬頭張嘴貪婪去吃，直到被大人拖進屋裏跟雨水隔離。也好，因為外邊是冷的，家裏是暖的，窗玻璃上正好可以嗬幾口氣畫畫兒寫字兒，我寫小狗小狗小狗小狗，旁邊畫個小人兒，小人兒穿的衣服上寫著姐姐的名字。現在我已經忘了，為什麽我不直接在小人的衣服上寫上小狗和我姐姐的名字。等雨停了，我跟剛被我罵過的姐姐手拉手跑出去玩兒，專門去踩泥坑，被媽媽痛罵。現在我的孩子也踩泥坑，我也罵他們，因為我成了洗衣煮飯照顧家小的媽媽。
戀愛的時候，堅信雨跟戀愛很有關係，兩人在雨裏一起淋雨才是頂浪漫的約會，隻是我的男友沒有一個也這樣認為，可想而知我的浪漫主義該有多麽寂寞。當然了，浪漫的，還有在雨裏失戀。讓大雨跟淚水混在一起，電影電視裏的女主角都是這樣失戀的呦。我就一個人在大雨裏淋著，回去再用冷水衝個澡。那可真是遭罪啊，咬著牙在冷水下衝著的時候我心想，這下我肯定會感冒，會大病一場，會昏迷不醒，會惹人憐愛，電影電視裏的女主角都是這樣失戀的呦。很可惜我身體太好，結果總沒生成大病，連噴嚏都難得打上一個，於是隻好，次日醒來，灰溜溜背著書包去上學，沒有電影電視女主角那麽樣悲悲切切失戀的特權。
我也以為江南的雨是銷魂的，就去了江南。在無錫，碰上雨後大水，朋友家一樓積了很深的水，重要的東西都被堆在高處，我看著非常不牢固，怕積水稍有蕩漾，晃動桌椅，那些易碎的物件就都落下來摔得粉碎。朋友卻很習慣了的樣子，跟我一起坐在樓上吃大餛飩，對麵就是走船的窄河，河上有船，河邊有人在騎車，異常平靜，既不驚天動地也不旖旎銷魂。直到將近兩年前，我寫《雨飄家山》一文 ，想起往事，這才體會出江南細雨的美好來。其中我回憶道：
那次蘇州之行，有兩個畫麵存在我腦子裏：大姐的媽媽煮酒釀湯團給我吃，放了桂花的；大姐帶我去爬，在半山腰遇上了雨。我們就留在山間的一家茶社喝茶。
印象裏那間茶社比江南我逛過的多家都好，因為除了提供茶葉和一隻暖瓶，還用了上好的茶具，而且戶外的棚子也搭得相當別致。我們坐在靠山的那一麵，有一段細小的瀑布，從山上經過我們眼前，流到一個小小的魚池裏邊兒。
讀過許多關於蘇州的文字，但是對我而言，那碗湯團和那家茶館才是蘇州。
後來去了深圳，那裏是多雨的，下水又不通暢，碰上過好幾回的水災。深圳河的臭水很會漲，大家馬桶裏的水也是。朋友家被淹，哥兒幾個趟著屎尿湯子去幫他們搶救畢業證書和金銀細軟，很有落難的交情。人民橋下是個盆樣的地段，積水甚多，要去國貿上班的人們被困在橋的這一頭。有人搖了小小船，出來做擺渡的生意。沒有小船的生意人，搬出兩個梯子，分別架在橋的兩頭，爬上橋再爬下去，就可以上班了。隻是到了公司才發現，同事們多半都不能來，且大水仍在上漲，老板遂宣布放假。於是又得要再掏一次錢，請擺渡的船家把自己運過屎尿以及深圳河的汙水匯成的小水溝去。有人不喜歡被敲竹杠，將錢包高高舉過頭頂，自己艱難地涉水過去，皮帶和西裝自然是完蛋了，但是打擊了乘人之急的小人，這麽想想，就不必再吝惜那些行頭。《櫻桃小丸子》有一集，也是演發大水。暴雨過後，小丸子跟爺爺跑到街上去看熱鬧，瞧見有人在水裏掙紮，有人在屋頂釣魚，這一老一小滿心的幸災樂禍，快樂也無邊。這段動畫，最符合我對深圳發水的記憶。
來美國，也碰上過颶風。當時正懷著大女兒阿小 J ，天天捧著個大肚子，坐在電視機前看紅色警報。因為懷孕，一直不敢喝茶不敢喝汽水，但是看警報的時候，我破例喝了一罐 Dr. Pepper ——反正不曉得自己和孩子明天的命運，不如眼前享受一下下再說。那個雨啊，也是下得昏天黑地的，很多很多天都不消停。出門必會濕了鞋襪和褲管，於是正好有了理由不必出門，跟爸爸媽媽紮在家裏，隔著窗戶看不得不出門謀生的人們，在大雨裏埋起頭佝著背走路，對自己的處境生出感恩的心來。三豐子寫過段“冬天的好時光”，我看了對她說，我喜歡冬天的中午，在我們這兒基本都是陽光明媚。洗碗的時候，太陽正照在手上，特別暖和。暖和的好處，隻有在寒冷的日子才體會得到。
那段日子，在颶風裏，有我老爸老媽和快要出生的女兒陪著我，我覺得很暖和。
我是個特別幸運的人，從小到大，沒有獨自經曆過什麽風雨。凡是暴雨，總有親人伴著我，所以我下雨還敢有浪漫情懷，還能幸災樂禍。
這麽胡亂想了一夜。早晨不到六點，孩子們就被風雨吵醒，怕怕，跑到我們的房間裏來。我摟著他們，意識到這好象是他們出生以來經曆的最大一場雨，難怪會又害怕又興奮了。一點雪一點雨一道彩虹一隻睡覺的小豬一頭吃奶的小牛，幾乎一切事物，對於他們，都是新奇的，真是缺少見識呀。隻是今天沒有雷電，不然他們止不定得多麽雀躍。
奇怪呢，我長大以後，似乎就沒怎麽碰上過雷電交加的暴雨。雨總是被風鼓吹得很威風似的，其實沒有什麽大厲害。
果然，出門就發現，雨其實並不算大，隻是風吹得肆虐，造成瘋狂的陣勢。等紅綠燈，看見急急降落的雨，被風吹得輕煙一樣，在積水的路麵上迅速漂移。加油時坐在車裏，感覺得到車子被風吹得晃動了幾下。
外麵天黑漆漆的像在夜晚。這種時候，把暖氣燒熱，房子裏點幾盞燈，跟晚上天黑所點的燈又有不同。這就是下雨的好，晴天體會不到。
歌曲欣賞：Ordinary Miracle
這是電影《夏洛特的網》(Charlotte's Web)主題曲，由Sarah McLachlan演唱。
When everything is beautiful.
It’s just another ordinary miracle today.
The sky knows when its time to snow,
Don’t need to teach a seed to grow.
It’s just another ordinary miracle today.
Life is like a gift they say
Wrapped up for you everyday;
Open up and find a way
To give some of your own.
Isn’t it remarkable?
Like every time a rain drop falls,
It’s just another ordinary miracle today.
Birds in winter have their fling
But always make it home by spring.
It’s just another ordinary miracle today.
When you wake up everyday
Please don’t throw your dreams away;
Hold them close to your heart
Cause we’re all a part
Of the ordinary miracle.
Ordinary miracle
Do you want to see a miracle?
ohh ohh ohh, ohhh ohh ohh...
It seems so exceptional
That things just work out after all.
It’s just another ordinary miracle today.
Sun comes up and shines so bright
And disappears again at night.
It’s just another ordinary miracle today.
ohh ohh ohh, ohh ohhh ohh...
It’s just another ordinary miracle today.
你後來蠟燭用到了嗎？
今天晚上看來要過得老浪漫了，看來應該順手買兩瓶好酒回來。
太陽冒出來了，特失望。
哪小吒，能幸災樂禍也是福氣啊！不，不對，用孤小草等人的說法，是更高階段，嗬嗬。
Does Fatherhood Make You Happy?
Time Magazine, June 19, 2006
Sonora Smart Dodd was listening to a sermon on self-sacrifice when she decided that her father, a widower who had raised six children, deserved his very own national holiday. Almost a century later, people all over the world spend the third Sunday in June honoring their fathers with ritual offerings of aftershave and neckties, which leads millions of fathers to have precisely the same thought at precisely the same moment: “My children,” they think in unison, “make me happy.”
Could all those dads be wrong?
Studies reveal that most married couples start out happy and then become progressively less satisfied over the course of their lives, becoming especially disconsolate when their children are in diapers and in adolescence, and returning to their initial levels of happiness only after their children have had the decency to grow up and go away. When the popular press invented a malady called “empty-nest syndrome,” it failed to mention that its primary symptom is a marked increase in smiling.
Psychologists have measured how people feel as they go about their daily activities, and have found that people are less happy when they are interacting with their children than when they are eating, exercising, shopping or watching television. Indeed, an act of parenting makes most people about as happy as an act of housework. Economists have modeled the impact of many variables on people’s overall happiness and have consistently found that children have only a small impact. A small negative impact.
Those findings are hard to swallow because they fly in the face of our most compelling intuitions. We love our children! We talk about them to anyone who will listen, show their photographs to anyone who will look and hide our refrigerators behind vast collages of their drawings, notes, pictures and report cards. We feel confident that we are happy with our kids, about our kids, for our kids and because of our kids—so why is our personal experience at odds with the scientific data?
Three reasons.
First, when something makes us happy we are willing to pay a lot for it, which is why the worst Belgian chocolate is more expensive than the best Belgian tofu. But that process can work in reverse: when we pay a lot for something, we assume it makes us happy, which is why we swear to the wonders of bottled water and Armani socks. The compulsion to care for our children was long ago written into our DNA, so we toil and sweat, lose sleep and hair, play nurse, housekeeper, chauffeur and cook, and we do all that because nature just won’t have it any other way. Given the high price we pay, it isn’t surprising that we rationalize those costs and conclude that our children must be repaying us with happiness.
Second, if the Red Sox and the Yankees were scoreless until Manny Ramirez hit a grand slam in the bottom of the ninth, you can be sure that Boston fans would remember it as the best game of the season. Memories are dominated by their most powerful—and not their most typical—instances. Just as a glorious game-winning homer can erase our memory of 8 1/2 dull innings, the sublime moment when our 3-year-old looks up from the mess she is making with her mashed potatoes and says, “I wub you, Daddy,” can erase eight hours of no, not yet, not now and stop asking. Children may not make us happy very often, but when they do, that happiness is both transcendent and amnesic.
Third, although most of us think of heroin as a source of human misery, shooting heroin doesn’t actually make people feel miserable. It makes them feel really, really good—so good, in fact, that it crowds out every other source of pleasure. Family, friends, work, play, food, sex—none can compete with the narcotic experience; hence all fall by the wayside. The analogy to children is all too clear. Even if their company were an unremitting pleasure, the fact that they require so much company means that other sources of pleasure will all but disappear. Movies, theater, parties, travel—those are just a few of the English nouns that parents of young children quickly forget how to pronounce. We believe our children are our greatest joy, and we’re absolutely right. When you have one joy, it’s bound to be the greatest.
Our children give us many things, but an increase in our average daily happiness is probably not among them. Rather than deny that fact, we should celebrate it. Our ability to love beyond all measure those who try our patience and weary our bones is at once our most noble and most human quality. The fact that children don’t always make us happy—and that we’re happy to have them nonetheless—is the fact for which Sonora Smart Dodd was so grateful. She thought we would all do well to remember it, every third Sunday in June.
小名，關於我倆赤裸的友誼已經不需要用多餘的筆墨來描述了，任何描述，都是在侮辱這神聖的赤裸！
看見你寫櫻桃小丸子的那段，我想起來有一次我們這兒也是有颶風，電視廣播都興奮地預報並隨時準備即時追蹤報導，那勁頭就跟迎奧運似的。我在颶風來的那下午特意去了一個朋友家，他住得很高，我們泡了茶，吃點心，滿心滿意地等待颶風的到來，主要是想登高憑遠，看那些暴風雨裏掙紮的可憐人，指點江山。可令我失望的是，等了幾個小時，雨老是不來，就是天陰，後來等得沒意思，我就回家了。
可就像小說裏才有的那種命運似的，就在我走向地鐵的那段路上，雨突然傾盆而下，我被淋得全身體毛都耷拉了下來。
經過這個教訓，我明白了這麽一個道理：別想著笑話別人傻比，除非你和颶風一樣牛比。所以我現在時時刻刻拚命鍛煉自己……
哪小吒真是多愁多病身啊，要不誰煮杯咖啡給他喝喝？:)