前柳林
中國、美國 － 生活中的方方麵麵，與親友、同好分享。
前記：幾周前在文學城上讀到一篇父親在女兒婚禮上的致辭。言辭溫馨，感人之至。由是也動了把自己在女兒婚禮上的感言在城裏分享一番的念頭。猶豫了幾天，沒有忍住與天下新娘的父親們分享喜悅的欲望。除了感言孩子的成長，也深深欣慰於當年帶女兒出國的決定，今天看來是別無他選和唯一正確的抉擇。
《正文》
在女兒滉滉婚禮上爸爸的致辭
2018年7月14號。明州首府
各位親友，來賓：
我謹代表滉滉的媽媽和弟弟，與來自中國北京，新澤西，芝加哥，田納西和加州的家人們，特別是她97歲高齡的舅姥姥，對大家光臨滉滉和帥哥*的婚禮，表示熱烈和誠摯地歡迎！
當我們有了孩子以後，和他們的交往常常就成了我們衡量自己年齡的標尺。突然某一天，你會發現，在餐館吃飯的時候，你不再點菜了。他們在為你精心挑選菜肴。你又發現你不再為他們打扮去參加某項活動。他們在熱情地建議你如何為參加盛事或旅行著裝。你也會發現，從某一天起，和孩子們一起出門時，你坐在汽車的後座上而不再駕駛汽車。
可是，所有這些，都無法與參加孩子的婚禮更能夠提醒你，你已經走進了你自己生活中新的一章。
滉滉，祝賀你！自從你在清華校醫院出生的那天開始，我和媽媽就憧憬著這一天的到來。順便告訴你，那天淩晨我是用自行車把你媽媽馱到醫院的。
滉滉長得很漂亮，我對此從未有過懷疑。有一天，還是她上高中的時候。教世界曆史的老師走近她，問道：你有媽媽的照片嗎？滉滉很蹊蹺。老師接著說，我想看看媽媽要有多漂亮，才能生出這樣標致的女兒。當滉滉回家告訴我這個故事時，諸位可以想象我當時有多麽得意！但是，我們更關心的其實是滉滉的內心是否美麗。令我們十分欣慰的是，滉滉出落成為一個有愛心和責任感的姑娘。直到滉滉五歲，她和我的父母生活在中國。我父親2012年病重時，她從紐約專程飛到北京爺爺的病榻前，向他做最後的道別。滉滉選中就學在芝加哥北郊的西北大學，原因之一是她想多有機會，親眼看著小她八歲的弟弟長大。她的朋友和同事們一定也很喜歡和尊重她，否則我無法想象今天的婚禮如何會有近三百位來賓！
好吧，現在來談談帥哥。我是學工程的，做事偏愛遵循規範和邏輯。所以，當那天帥哥突然來電話，要獨自來訪時，我立即上網研究了兩個小時。在未來的女婿來征求我是否同意娶走我的女兒時，我要設計出最嚴謹的問題，對他做徹底的考察。不出我之所料，帥哥順利、圓滿地解答了我難度十倍於他的執業資格考試的試題。我聽說，那年他的職業考試成績排在全國考生中的前10%。他不但“筆試”成績優秀， 他的“實習”成績亦可圈可點：他自從和滉滉談戀愛之後，輕鬆地用他出色的表現贏得了滉滉和我們全家的認可。 我現在宣布：帥哥，歡迎你加入我們的家庭！施洛夫先生和太太：請放心，我們會善待貴公子的。
最後，我再講一個滉滉的故事，以結束我的感言。我們是1987年來到美國的。滉滉當時兩歲，留在了中國，由我的父母照看了她兩年。她五歲時回到了我們的身邊。她第一天單獨睡在自己的房間裏的那天夜半，我們被房間裏的動靜驚醒。發現她站在我們的床前，雙眼浸滿了淚水。我們驚奇地問：滉滉，你怎麽了？原來，她睡夢中醒來，發現身旁無人。她下床跑到樓道的電梯門口，仍然空無一人。待她慌恐地走回家裏，才想起來家裏還另有一個房間，媽媽和爸爸睡在裏麵。她哭著說，我以為你們不要我了，走了。直到今天，我們仍然對在她兩歲到五歲之間沒有在她的身邊感到不安和內疚，雖然她當時有來自祖父母，姑姑，舅舅和姨姨們大海般的摯愛。
今天，二十八年過去了。我們越來越感覺到，我們當年做了一個非常正確的決定，把滉滉帶到美國來，為她的生活和生命展現如此巨大的機會。我們的這個決定經受住了時間的考驗。現在，滉滉為自己做出了一個她人生中最重要的決定。我和她的媽媽為她自豪並完全相信她的選擇。我們也相信，帥哥也做出了同樣的決定，願意和她攜手一生。
謝謝大家。
* 帥哥：新科女婿名字的諧音與昵稱
與女兒起舞
時間荏苒，女兒的女兒剛剛半歲了。
第一個國慶節
English Version
On behalf of Lisa’s mother, Hongxian, her brother, Max, and everyone from our family, from Beijing, New Jersey, Tennessee, California, in particular, Lisa’s grand aunt from Alabama who is 92 years young, I am happy to welcome all of you to Lisa and Sagar’s wedding.
Once we had children, we started benchmarking our age by how we interacted with them. After one day you don’t order dishes in restaurants any more. They do it for us. We don’t tell them what to wear at an occasion. They advise us how to dress formally or casually. We don’t drive them anymore. We sit in the backseat of the car. None of these changes is, however, as significant in signaling we’ve moved into a new phase of our life as coming to the wedding of our kids.
Lisa, congratulations! We have been looking forward to this day since the day you were born in the campus hospital in Tsinghua University in Beijing. By the way, I took your mother to the hospital that day by a bicycle!
Lisa is beautiful. I have never doubted it. One day in high school, her social study teacher approached her and asked if she had a picture of her mother. Lisa was puzzled. The teacher continued: “I want to see how beautiful your mother has to be for you to be so pretty!” You can image how proud I was when Lisa told me this.
But what we care more, much more about, is how beautiful Lisa is inside. Parents can only hope the good values we hold will pass through our genes and upbringing. To our relief and great pride, Lisa has turned out to be a very lovely, considerate and responsible woman, I mean a human being. She lived with my parents for the first 5 years of her life. 22 years later, she flew to China from New York City to be at the deathbed of my father to say goodbye to him. Lisa picked Northwestern for college for a “small part” because she wanted to be in the life of her little brother when he grew up. Apparently Lisa is respected and trusted by her friends and colleagues as well. Otherwise, her wedding ceremony wouldn’t be this big in size.
Now let’s talk about Sagar. I was an engineer by training. I make decisions and take actions most of times based on my training and logic. That is why the day after Sagar called out of the blue saying he wanted to visit us without Lisa’s company, I went to the Internet immediately and studied intensively for 2 hours. I wanted to research the best questions to ask Sagar when he came to ask for permission to marry my daughter. As I expected, our future son-in-law was smart enough to correctly answer all the questions and passed my test, which is probably 10 times harder than his GI certification exam that he was the top 10 percentile nationally that year, I was told. Sagar not only passed the in-class test but he is also doing excellently in his “residency.” I mean in the last two years since he dated Lisa he has effortlessly won all of our hearts.
I am now proud and pleased to announce: Sagar, you are a member of the family! Mr. and Mrs. Shroff, we’ll take good care of your son.
Finally, let me end with another story about Lisa. After her mother and I left China to pursue our new life here in the U.S., Lisa lived with my parents for two and half years before she was sent here to join us. During her first night here she had her own room and slept alone, we woke up in the middle of the night. She stood right in front of our bed with tears in her eyes. We asked her: “What happened and why can’t you sleep?” She said she woke up and found no one next to her. She ran to the elevator in the hallway only to find no one was there as well. She came back to the apartment and realized there was another room and mom and dad were there. She said I thought you don’t want me and left. We still feel so sorry to this day because, when we were trying to settle down in the new world for a better life, we were not with her for those two and half years when she was a baby girl.
But as days went by, some 28 years later, we felt more and more convinced that we made a far-sighted decision to bring her to this great country with its vast opportunities. Now, Lisa is making a life decision of her own. Her mother and I are very proud of her and totally believe in her. We are also completely convinced that Sagar would agree with Lisa on this and will lend her unconditional and whole hearted support in the entire journey of their lifes together!
Thank you.
