前柳林
中国、美国 － 生活中的方方面面，与亲友、同好分享。
前记：几周前在文学城上读到一篇父亲在女儿婚礼上的致辞。言辞温馨，感人之至。由是也动了把自己在女儿婚礼上的感言在城里分享一番的念头。犹豫了几天，没有忍住与天下新娘的父亲们分享喜悦的欲望。除了感言孩子的成长，也深深欣慰于当年带女儿出国的决定，今天看来是别无他选和唯一正确的抉择。
《正文》
在女儿滉滉婚礼上爸爸的致辞
2018年7月14号。明州首府
各位亲友，来宾：
我谨代表滉滉的妈妈和弟弟，与来自中国北京，新泽西，芝加哥，田纳西和加州的家人们，特别是她97岁高龄的舅姥姥，对大家光临滉滉和帅哥*的婚礼，表示热烈和诚挚地欢迎！
当我们有了孩子以后，和他们的交往常常就成了我们衡量自己年龄的标尺。突然某一天，你会发现，在餐馆吃饭的时候，你不再点菜了。他们在为你精心挑选菜肴。你又发现你不再为他们打扮去参加某项活动。他们在热情地建议你如何为参加盛事或旅行着装。你也会发现，从某一天起，和孩子们一起出门时，你坐在汽车的后座上而不再驾驶汽车。
可是，所有这些，都无法与参加孩子的婚礼更能够提醒你，你已经走进了你自己生活中新的一章。
滉滉，祝贺你！自从你在清华校医院出生的那天开始，我和妈妈就憧憬着这一天的到来。顺便告诉你，那天凌晨我是用自行车把你妈妈驮到医院的。
滉滉长得很漂亮，我对此从未有过怀疑。有一天，还是她上高中的时候。教世界历史的老师走近她，问道：你有妈妈的照片吗？滉滉很蹊跷。老师接着说，我想看看妈妈要有多漂亮，才能生出这样标致的女儿。当滉滉回家告诉我这个故事时，诸位可以想象我当时有多么得意！但是，我们更关心的其实是滉滉的内心是否美丽。令我们十分欣慰的是，滉滉出落成为一个有爱心和责任感的姑娘。直到滉滉五岁，她和我的父母生活在中国。我父亲2012年病重时，她从纽约专程飞到北京爷爷的病榻前，向他做最后的道别。滉滉选中就学在芝加哥北郊的西北大学，原因之一是她想多有机会，亲眼看着小她八岁的弟弟长大。她的朋友和同事们一定也很喜欢和尊重她，否则我无法想象今天的婚礼如何会有近三百位来宾！
好吧，现在来谈谈帅哥。我是学工程的，做事偏爱遵循规范和逻辑。所以，当那天帅哥突然来电话，要独自来访时，我立即上网研究了两个小时。在未来的女婿来征求我是否同意娶走我的女儿时，我要设计出最严谨的问题，对他做彻底的考察。不出我之所料，帅哥顺利、圆满地解答了我难度十倍于他的执业资格考试的试题。我听说，那年他的职业考试成绩排在全国考生中的前10%。他不但“笔试”成绩优秀， 他的“实习”成绩亦可圈可点：他自从和滉滉谈恋爱之后，轻松地用他出色的表现赢得了滉滉和我们全家的认可。 我现在宣布：帅哥，欢迎你加入我们的家庭！施洛夫先生和太太：请放心，我们会善待贵公子的。
最后，我再讲一个滉滉的故事，以结束我的感言。我们是1987年来到美国的。滉滉当时两岁，留在了中国，由我的父母照看了她两年。她五岁时回到了我们的身边。她第一天单独睡在自己的房间里的那天夜半，我们被房间里的动静惊醒。发现她站在我们的床前，双眼浸满了泪水。我们惊奇地问：滉滉，你怎么了？原来，她睡梦中醒来，发现身旁无人。她下床跑到楼道的电梯门口，仍然空无一人。待她慌恐地走回家里，才想起来家里还另有一个房间，妈妈和爸爸睡在里面。她哭着说，我以为你们不要我了，走了。直到今天，我们仍然对在她两岁到五岁之间没有在她的身边感到不安和内疚，虽然她当时有来自祖父母，姑姑，舅舅和姨姨们大海般的挚爱。
今天，二十八年过去了。我们越来越感觉到，我们当年做了一个非常正确的决定，把滉滉带到美国来，为她的生活和生命展现如此巨大的机会。我们的这个决定经受住了时间的考验。现在，滉滉为自己做出了一个她人生中最重要的决定。我和她的妈妈为她自豪并完全相信她的选择。我们也相信，帅哥也做出了同样的决定，愿意和她携手一生。
谢谢大家。
* 帅哥：新科女婿名字的谐音与昵称
与女儿起舞
时间荏苒，女儿的女儿刚刚半岁了。
第一个国庆节
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.
