这一场豪雨，我躺在床上的时候想。
一夜没有睡踏实，雨打在玻璃上的声音，仿佛就在枕边，没完没了地响着。大风一阵阵吹过院子，被树木压制得像在愤怒地呻吟。
反正睡不着，我干脆就专心听雨，落在凉亭铺设的石砖上面，响动不似敲打窗户那样清脆，但声势很大，也能够辨别得出石砖之间的水洼，有水去碰撞水，竟然像兵刃去碰撞兵刃，带着钢铁的凌厉。
想起几样雨中的往事来。
小孩子好像都爱吃雨，仰起脸用舌头接几滴，其余的都打在脸蛋上。虽然爸爸妈妈说雨水不干净，还是要抬头张嘴贪婪去吃，直到被大人拖进屋里跟雨水隔离。也好，因为外边是冷的，家里是暖的，窗玻璃上正好可以呵几口气画画儿写字儿，我写小狗小狗小狗小狗，旁边画个小人儿，小人儿穿的衣服上写着姐姐的名字。现在我已经忘了，为什么我不直接在小人的衣服上写上小狗和我姐姐的名字。等雨停了，我跟刚被我骂过的姐姐手拉手跑出去玩儿，专门去踩泥坑，被妈妈痛骂。现在我的孩子也踩泥坑，我也骂他们，因为我成了洗衣煮饭照顾家小的妈妈。
恋爱的时候，坚信雨跟恋爱很有关系，两人在雨里一起淋雨才是顶浪漫的约会，只是我的男友没有一个也这样认为，可想而知我的浪漫主义该有多么寂寞。当然了，浪漫的，还有在雨里失恋。让大雨跟泪水混在一起，电影电视里的女主角都是这样失恋的呦。我就一个人在大雨里淋着，回去再用冷水冲个澡。那可真是遭罪啊，咬着牙在冷水下冲着的时候我心想，这下我肯定会感冒，会大病一场，会昏迷不醒，会惹人怜爱，电影电视里的女主角都是这样失恋的呦。很可惜我身体太好，结果总没生成大病，连喷嚏都难得打上一个，于是只好，次日醒来，灰溜溜背着书包去上学，没有电影电视女主角那么样悲悲切切失恋的特权。
我也以为江南的雨是销魂的，就去了江南。在无锡，碰上雨后大水，朋友家一楼积了很深的水，重要的东西都被堆在高处，我看着非常不牢固，怕积水稍有荡漾，晃动桌椅，那些易碎的物件就都落下来摔得粉碎。朋友却很习惯了的样子，跟我一起坐在楼上吃大馄饨，对面就是走船的窄河，河上有船，河边有人在骑车，异常平静，既不惊天动地也不旖旎销魂。直到将近两年前，我写《雨飘家山》一文 ，想起往事，这才体会出江南细雨的美好来。其中我回忆道：
那次苏州之行，有两个画面存在我脑子里：大姐的妈妈煮酒酿汤团给我吃，放了桂花的；大姐带我去爬，在半山腰遇上了雨。我们就留在山间的一家茶社喝茶。
印象里那间茶社比江南我逛过的多家都好，因为除了提供茶叶和一只暖瓶，还用了上好的茶具，而且户外的棚子也搭得相当别致。我们坐在靠山的那一面，有一段细小的瀑布，从山上经过我们眼前，流到一个小小的鱼池里边儿。
读过许多关于苏州的文字，但是对我而言，那碗汤团和那家茶馆才是苏州。
后来去了深圳，那里是多雨的，下水又不通畅，碰上过好几回的水灾。深圳河的臭水很会涨，大家马桶里的水也是。朋友家被淹，哥儿几个趟着屎尿汤子去帮他们抢救毕业证书和金银细软，很有落难的交情。人民桥下是个盆样的地段，积水甚多，要去国贸上班的人们被困在桥的这一头。有人摇了小小船，出来做摆渡的生意。没有小船的生意人，搬出两个梯子，分别架在桥的两头，爬上桥再爬下去，就可以上班了。只是到了公司才发现，同事们多半都不能来，且大水仍在上涨，老板遂宣布放假。于是又得要再掏一次钱，请摆渡的船家把自己运过屎尿以及深圳河的污水汇成的小水沟去。有人不喜欢被敲竹杠，将钱包高高举过头顶，自己艰难地涉水过去，皮带和西装自然是完蛋了，但是打击了乘人之急的小人，这么想想，就不必再吝惜那些行头。《樱桃小丸子》有一集，也是演发大水。暴雨过后，小丸子跟爷爷跑到街上去看热闹，瞧见有人在水里挣扎，有人在屋顶钓鱼，这一老一小满心的幸灾乐祸，快乐也无边。这段动画，最符合我对深圳发水的记忆。
来美国，也碰上过飓风。当时正怀着大女儿阿小 J ，天天捧着个大肚子，坐在电视机前看红色警报。因为怀孕，一直不敢喝茶不敢喝汽水，但是看警报的时候，我破例喝了一罐 Dr. Pepper ——反正不晓得自己和孩子明天的命运，不如眼前享受一下下再说。那个雨啊，也是下得昏天黑地的，很多很多天都不消停。出门必会湿了鞋袜和裤管，于是正好有了理由不必出门，跟爸爸妈妈扎在家里，隔着窗户看不得不出门谋生的人们，在大雨里埋起头佝着背走路，对自己的处境生出感恩的心来。三丰子写过段“冬天的好时光”，我看了对她说，我喜欢冬天的中午，在我们这儿基本都是阳光明媚。洗碗的时候，太阳正照在手上，特别暖和。暖和的好处，只有在寒冷的日子才体会得到。
那段日子，在飓风里，有我老爸老妈和快要出生的女儿陪着我，我觉得很暖和。
我是个特别幸运的人，从小到大，没有独自经历过什么风雨。凡是暴雨，总有亲人伴着我，所以我下雨还敢有浪漫情怀，还能幸灾乐祸。
这么胡乱想了一夜。早晨不到六点，孩子们就被风雨吵醒，怕怕，跑到我们的房间里来。我搂着他们，意识到这好象是他们出生以来经历的最大一场雨，难怪会又害怕又兴奋了。一点雪一点雨一道彩虹一只睡觉的小猪一头吃奶的小牛，几乎一切事物，对于他们，都是新奇的，真是缺少见识呀。只是今天没有雷电，不然他们止不定得多么雀跃。
奇怪呢，我长大以后，似乎就没怎么碰上过雷电交加的暴雨。雨总是被风鼓吹得很威风似的，其实没有什么大厉害。
果然，出门就发现，雨其实并不算大，只是风吹得肆虐，造成疯狂的阵势。等红绿灯，看见急急降落的雨，被风吹得轻烟一样，在积水的路面上迅速漂移。加油时坐在车里，感觉得到车子被风吹得晃动了几下。
外面天黑漆漆的像在夜晚。这种时候，把暖气烧热，房子里点几盏灯，跟晚上天黑所点的灯又有不同。这就是下雨的好，晴天体会不到。
歌曲欣赏：Ordinary Miracle
这是电影《夏洛特的网》(Charlotte's Web)主题曲，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.
你后来蜡烛用到了吗？
今天晚上看来要过得老浪漫了，看来应该顺手买两瓶好酒回来。
太阳冒出来了，特失望。
哪小吒，能幸灾乐祸也是福气啊！不，不对，用孤小草等人的说法，是更高阶段，呵呵。
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，关于我俩赤裸的友谊已经不需要用多余的笔墨来描述了，任何描述，都是在侮辱这神圣的赤裸！
看见你写樱桃小丸子的那段，我想起来有一次我们这儿也是有飓风，电视广播都兴奋地预报并随时准备即时追踪报导，那劲头就跟迎奥运似的。我在飓风来的那下午特意去了一个朋友家，他住得很高，我们泡了茶，吃点心，满心满意地等待飓风的到来，主要是想登高凭远，看那些暴风雨里挣扎的可怜人，指点江山。可令我失望的是，等了几个小时，雨老是不来，就是天阴，后来等得没意思，我就回家了。
可就像小说里才有的那种命运似的，就在我走向地铁的那段路上，雨突然倾盆而下，我被淋得全身体毛都耷拉了下来。
经过这个教训，我明白了这么一个道理：别想着笑话别人傻比，除非你和飓风一样牛比。所以我现在时时刻刻拼命锻炼自己……
哪小吒真是多愁多病身啊，要不谁煮杯咖啡给他喝喝？:)