Growing Up
1 Fifty years ago parents still asked boys if they wanted to grow up to be president, and asked it not jokingly but seriously. Many parents who were hardly more than paupers still believed their sons could do it. Abraham Lincoln had done it. We were only sixty-five years from Lincoln. Many of grandfather who walked among us could remeber Lincoln. Men of grandfatherly age were the worst for asking if you wanted to grow up to be president. A surprising number of little boys said yes and meant it.五十年前父母大都会问男孩子们长大后想不想当总统，问这话时一本正经，并非开玩笑。许多穷得跟乞丐似的父母也仍然相信他们的孩子能当上总统。亚伯拉罕・林肯就做到了。我们与林肯那个时代仅仅差65年。依然健在的许多爷爷辈的人还能记得林肯时代。就是他们最喜欢问你长大后想不想当总统。回答说想当的小男孩数量多得惊人，而且他们是当真的。
2 I was asked many times myself. No, I didn’t want to grow up to be president. My mother was present during one of these interrogations. An elderly uncle, having posed the usual question and exposed my lack of interest in the presidency, asked, “Well, what do you want to be when you grow up.我就曾经被问过多次。我会回答说不，我长大后不想当总统。有一个年纪大的叔叔，当着母亲的面向我提出这个问烂了的问题，发现了我对当总统不感兴趣，他就接着又问：“那你长大了想干什么呢？”
3 I loved to pick through trash piles and collect empty bottles, tin cans with pretty labels, and discarded magazines. The most desirable job on earth sprang instantly to mind. “I want to be a garbage man,” I said.我那时喜欢到垃圾堆上去拣东西，收集空瓶子、有漂亮标签的罐子和废弃的杂志。世界上最吸引我的工作立刻浮现在我的脑子里。“我想当一个垃圾工。”我说道。
4 My uncle smiled, but my mother had seen the first distressing evidence of a bump budding on a log. “Have a little gumption, Russell,” she said. Her calling me Russell was a signal of unhappiness. When she approved of me I was always “Buddy”.叔叔听后笑了，而母亲却觉察到了我那呆头呆脑的苗头，不免伤心。“有点上进心吧，拉塞尔。”她说道。她叫我“拉塞尔”表明她不高兴，因为她夸我的时候总是叫我“小家伙”。
5 When I turned eight years old she decided that the job of starting me on the road toward making something of myself could no longer be safely delayed, “Buddy ,” she said one day, “ I want you to come home right after school this afternoon. Somebody’s coming and I want you to meet him.”转眼间我长到了八岁， 她觉得我得找个工作，开始踏上那条让我自己成就点什么的道路，而不能再四平八稳地坐失良机了。“巴迪”，有一天她跟我说，“今天放学后马上回家。有人要来，我要你见见他。”
6 When I burst in that afternoon she was in conference in the parlor with an executive of the Curtis Publishing Company. She introduced me. He bent low from the waist and shook my hand. Was it true as my mother had told him, he asked, that I longer for the opportunity to conquer the world of business?那天下午我冲进家门的时候，她正在客厅里跟柯蒂斯出版公司的一个负责人谈话。他把我介绍给他。他弯下腰和我握了握手，问我是不是像母亲说的那样渴望获得进入商界的机会。
7 My mother replied that I was blessed with a rare determination to make to succeed in business.” 母亲在一旁忙说我决意要使自己成为一个有所成就的人。
8 “That’s right,” I said.“是的。”我低声说。
9 “But have you got the grit, the character, the never-say-quit spirit it takes to succeed in business.”“那么，你是否具备在商业上获得成功所需要的刚强、勇气和绝不放弃的精神呢？”
10 My mother said I certainly did.母亲回答说我当然具备。
11 “That’s right,” I said.“是的。”我说。
12 He eyed me silently for a long pause, as though weighing whether I could be trusted to keep his confidence, then spoke man-to-man. Before taking a crucial step, he said, he wanted to advise me that working for the Curtis Publishing Company placed enormous responsibility on a young man. It was one of the great companies of America. Perhaps the greatest publishing house in the world. I had heard, no doubt, of the Saturday Post?他盯着我好一会儿，默不作声，似乎在掂量着我是否值得他的信任，然后和我坦率地谈了起来。他说，在走出关键性的一步之前，他得提醒我，年轻人为柯蒂斯出版公司工作要承担巨大的责任。它是美国最了不起的公司之一，也许是世界上最了不起的出版公司。毫无疑问，我肯定听说过《星期六晚邮报》吧？
13 Heard of it? My mother said everyone in our house had heard of the Saturday Post and that, I, in fact, read it with religious devotion.岂止听说过母亲说全家人可是都知道《星期六邮报》的，而且说我实际上是它的忠实读者。
14 He said he had been so impressed by what he had seen of me that he was going to make me a representative of the Curtis Publishing Company. On the following Tuesday, he said, thirty freshly printed copies of the Saturday Evening Post would be delivered at our door. I would place these magazines still damp with the ink of the presses, in a handsome canvas bag, sling it over my shoulder, and set forth through the streets to bring the best in journalism, fiction, and cartoons to the American public.最后，他说他对我的印象非常深刻，打算吸纳我为柯蒂斯出版公司的一员。他说，下周二会有三十份刚印刷出来的《星期六晚邮报》送到我家门口。我要把这些还带着印刷油墨潮气的期刊放到一个漂亮的帆布包里，吊挂在我的肩上，然后走上大街小巷，把新闻、小说和卡通的精华带给美国大众。
15 He had brought the canvas bag with him. He presented it with reverence fit for a chasuble. He should me how to drape the sling over my left shoulder and across the chest so that the pouch lay easily accessible to my right hand, allowing the best in journalism, fiction, and cartoons to be swiftly extracted and sold to a citizenry whose happiness and security depended upon us soldiers of the free press.他随身带着那个帆布包。他把它打开时那毕恭毕敬的神情简直像是神父在打开一件十字褡。他向我演示如何把吊带搭在我的左肩上，从胸前穿过，这样我的右手就能方便地伸到邮袋里，以便迅速地取出那些新闻、小说和卡通的精华卖给市民，他们的幸福和安全可全指望着我们这些自由报业的战士呢。
16 The following Tuesday I raced home from school, put the canvas bag over my shoulder, dumped the magazines in, and, tilting to the left to balance their weight on my right hip, embarked on the highway of journalism.星期二放学后我跑回家，把帆布包挎在肩上，装上杂志，左右移了移，让它的重量平衡，然后迈开步伐踏上了新闻业的征途。
17 We lived in Belleville, New Jersey, a commuter town at the northern fringe of Newark. It was 1932, the bleakest year of the Depression. My father had died two years before, leaving us with a few pieces of Sears Roebuck furniture and not much else, and my mother had taken Doris and me to live with one of her younger brothers. This was my Uncle Allen had made something of himself by 1932. As a salesman for a soft-drink bottler in Newark, he had an income of $30 a week, wore pearl-gray spats, detachable collars, and a three-piece suit; was happily married; and took in threadbare relatives.我们住在新泽西州贝勒镇，它位于纽瓦克北部边缘，处于一个市郊间上下班的枢纽上。那是1932年，大萧条最严峻的年代。父亲两年前就去世了，只留给我们几件从希尔斯・罗巴克公司买来的家具，就没别的了。母亲带着多丽丝和我跟小舅舅艾伦住在一起。艾伦舅舅在1932年的时候就已经小有成就了。他在纽瓦克推销软饮料装瓶机。他每周的收入30美元；他总是脚上套着珠灰色的鞋套，颈上系着可脱卸衣领，身上穿着三件套的西服。他的婚姻也很美满。就是他接纳了我们这些穷亲戚。
18 With my load of magazines I headed toward Belleville Avenue. That’s where the people were. There were two filling stations at the intersection with Union Avenue, as well as an A&P, a fruit stand, a bakery shop, Zuccarelli’s drugstore, and a diner shaped like a railroad car. For several hours I made myself highly visible, shifting position now and then from corner to corner, from shop window to shop window, to make sure everyone could see the heavy black letting on the canvas bag that said The Saturday Evening Post. When the angle of the light indicated it was suppertime, I walked back to the house.我背着沉甸甸的期刊朝贝勒大街走去。那里是人最多、最热闹的地方。在与联邦大街交叉的十字路口，有两家汽车加油站，还有一个大西洋及太平洋茶叶公司、一个水果摊、一家面包店、一家理发店、祖卡雷利的杂货店和一家外形像火车车箱的小饭馆。接下来的几个小时，为了能让人们看到我，我不时地变换位置，从一个街口到另一个街口，从一个橱窗到另一个橱窗，确保每个人都能看到帆布包上印的又黑又粗的字：“星期六晚邮报”。当天色已晚，该吃晚饭了，我才往家走。
19 “How many did you sell, Buddy?” my mother asked.“你卖了几份，小家伙？”母亲问道。
20 “None.”“一份没卖。”
21 “Where did you go?”“你去哪儿卖的？”
22 “The corner of Belleville and Union Avenue.”“贝勒大街和联邦大街的街口。”
23 “What did you do?”“你是怎么卖的？”
24 “Stood on the corner waiting for somebody to buy a Saturday Evening Post.”“站在那儿，等人来买喽。”
25 “You just stood there?”“就只站在那儿？”
26 “Didn’t sell a single one.”“一份也没卖出去。”
27 “For God’s sake, Russell!” “天啊，拉塞尔！”
28 Uncle Allen intervened. “I’ve been thinking about it for some time,” he said, “and I’ve about decided to take the Post regularly. Put me a nickel. It was the first nickel I earned.艾伦舅舅插话了。“我考虑了有一段时间了，”他说，“我决定定期看这份邮报，把我当个固定顾客吧。”我递给他一份期刊，他付给我一枚5分硬币。这是我挣到的第一枚硬币。
29 Afterwards my mother instructed me in salesmanship . Iwould have to ring doorbells, address adults with charming self-confidence, and break down resistance with a sales talk pointing out that no one, no matter how poor ,could afford to be without the Saturday Evening Post in the home.之后母亲教了我一些推销术。我得去按人家的门铃，对大人们发表演说，要使他们无法拒绝，就得凭我三寸不烂之舌让他们相信，任何人——不管多穷——家里要是没有《星期六晚邮报》可是一个极大的损失。
30 I told my mother I’d changed my mind about wanting to succeed in the magazine business. 我跟母亲说我改主意了，不想在期刊业上有所成就了。
31 “If you think I’m going to raise a good-for-nothing,” she replied, “you’ve got another think coming.” She told me to hit the streets with the canvas bag and start ringing doorbells the instant school was out next day. I bowed to superior will and entered journalism with a heavy heart.“如果你认为我打算养一个饭桶，”母亲回答说，“那你可再得好好想想。”她要我第二天一放学就背着帆布包到大街上去按别人家的门铃。我只好领了圣旨，我带着一颗沉甸甸的心步入了新闻界。
32 By the time I was ten I had learned all my mother’s maxims by heart. The one I most despised was, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” This was the battle cry with which she constantly sent me back into the hopeless struggle whenever I moaned that I had rung every doorbell in town and knew there wasn’t a single potential buyer left in Belleville that week. After listening to my explanation, she handed me the canvas bag and said, “If at first you don’t succeed…”到我十岁的时候，我就熟记了母亲所有的格言。我最讨厌的那句就是：“如果开头失利，尝试，再尝试。”这就像一声战斗的呐喊，就是这句话，她一再地把我遣返到那毫无希望的战斗中去，即使我申辩说我已经按了镇上所有人家的门铃，觉得那个星期贝勒镇上不会有哪个人再来买这份期刊，那也无济于事。听完我的解释之后，她依旧会把帆布包递给我，说：“如果开头失利不要紧……”
33 Three years in that job, which I would gladly have quit after the first day except for her insistence, produced at least one valuable result. My mother finally concluded that I would never make something careers that demand less competitive zeal.三年的卖报生涯——要不是她坚持，我本来在第一天就可以开开心心地不干了——至少产生了一个有价值的结果。母亲终于得出结论，我绝不能在商界干出什么名堂来，于是，她开始为我考虑其他不需要太多竞争热情的职业。
34 One evening when I was eleven I brought home a short “composition” on my summer vacation which the teacher had graded with an A. Reading it with her own schoolteacher’s eye, my mother agreed that it was top-drawer seventh grade prose and complimented me. Nothing more was said about it immediately, but a new idea had taken life in her mind. Halfway through supper she suddenly interrupted the conversation.十一岁那年的一天晚上，我拿回家一篇我写的关于暑假的短“作文”，老师在上面批了个“A”。 母亲用她老师的眼光读了一遍，也认为这是一篇最优秀的七年级的散文，并表扬了我。当时她没再多说什么，但是一个新的想法已经在她的心里形成了。晚饭吃到一半的时候，她突然打断我们的谈话。
35 “Buddy,” she said, “maybe you could be a writer.”“孩子，”她说，“也许你能当个作家。”
36 I clasped the idea to my heart. I had never met a writer, had shown no previous urge to write, and hadn’t a notion how to become a writer, but I loved stories and thought that making up stories must surely be almost as much fun as reading them. Best of all, though, and what really gladdened my heart, was the ease of the writer’s life. Writers did not have to trudge through the town peddling from canvas bags, defending themselves against angry dogs, being rejected by surly strangers. Writers did not have to ring doorbells. So far as I could make out, what writers did couldn’t even be classified as work.这个想法还真打动了我的心。我虽然从没见过作家，以前也没显示出迫切的写作欲望，更不知道当作家是什么概念，但是我喜欢读小说，因此我想，编小说一定跟看小说一样有趣。不过，最重要又真正让我心花怒放的是作家那安逸的生活。作家无需在镇上四处奔劳兜售帆布包里的期刊；也无需提防着那些恶狗，不会遭粗暴无礼的陌生人拒绝。作家可不用去按门铃。就我所理解的作家而言，作家所做的事情归起类来甚至不能莫是一种工作。
37 I was enchanted. Writers didn’t have to have any gumption at all. I did not dare tell anybody for fear of being laughed at in the schoolyard, but secretly I decided that what I’d like to be when I grew up was a writer.我满心欢喜。作家根本就不需要什么上进心。因为担心在学校会被嘲笑，我不敢告诉任何人，但是私下里我意已决：长大了要当作家。
The Art of Friendship
Making Friends in Midlife
One evening a few years ago I found myself in a funk. Nothing was really wrong — my family and I were healthy, my career was busy and successful — I was just feeling vaguely down and in need of a friend who could raise my spirits, someone who would meet me for coffee and let me rant until the clouds lifted. Trouble was, there was no chum to call and confide in. Over the course of a few years all of my oldest, closest girlfriends had moved out of town, one by one, in search of better jobs, better weather, better men.几年前的一个晚上，我发现自己陷入惶恐之中。并不是真地出了什么事——我家和家人都身体健康，我的事业也蒸蒸日上——我只是有一种隐隐约约的沮丧感，想找个朋友鼓鼓劲，找个人，能和我喝杯咖啡，让我尽情倾诉，直到阴霾散尽。问题在于，没有这样的好友可以打电话，可以交心。几年之间，与我交往最久，相知最深的女友，都一个接一个搬离了这个城，或是为了更好的工作，或是为了更好的气候，或是为了更好的男人。
I dialed my best friend, who now lives across the country in California, and got her voice mail. That’s when it started to dawn on me — lonesomeness was at the root of my dreariness. My social life had dwindled to almost nothing, but somehow until that moment I’d been too busy to notice. Now it hit me hard. My old friends, buddies since college or even childhood, knew everything about me; when they had taken my context with them.我给我最好的朋友打了电话，她现在住在加利福尼亚那一边，我收到了她的语音留言。就在那时，我突然明白过来——寂寞就是我感到沮丧的根源。我的社交生活已经减至几乎为零，而我一向很忙，直至此刻才察觉到这一点。这给了我很大的打击。我从大学乃至小学就拥有的故交挚友，他们了解我的一切，当他们离开的时候，将我同他们的交情也带走了。
Research has shown the long-range negative consequences of social isolation on one’s health. But my concerns were more short-term. I needed to feel understood right then in the way that only a girlfriend can understand you. I knew it would be wrong to expect my husband to replace my friends: He couldn’t, and even if he could, to whom wounld I then complain about my husband?已经有研究显示社交孤立会对人的健康产生长期的负面影响。但我关心的是更为短期的事情。我需要那种只有女朋友才能给我的理解。我明白，指望的丈夫能够取代我的朋友是错误的。他做不到，即使他能做到，要是我想抱怨丈夫，我又去找谁呢？
So I resolved to acquire new friends — women like me who had kids and enjoyed rolling their eyes at the world a little bit just as I did. Since I’d be making friends with more intention than I’d ever given the process, I realized I could be selective, that I could in effect design my own social life. The downside, of course, was that I felt pretty initimidated.所以我决定去结交新的朋友——和我一样有孩子、又对外面的世界很感兴趣的女士。同以往相比，这样的交友更具目的性，这使我意识到我可以有更多的选择，实际上，我可以设计我自己的社交生活。差劲的是，不消说，我太担惊受怕。
After all, it’s a whole lot harder to make friends in midlife than it is when you’re younger — a fact women I’ve spoken with point out again and again. As Lesile Danzig, 41, a Chicago theater direcror and mother sees it, when you’re in your teens and 20s, you’re more or less friends with everyone unless there’s a reason not to be. Your college roommate becomes your best pal at least partly due to proximity. Now there needs to be a reason to be friends. “There are many people I’m comfortable around, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call them friends. Comfort isn’t enough to sustain a real friendship,” Danzig says.毕竟，同年轻时比，人到中年结交朋友要艰难得多。这是我与之交谈过的女士们一遍又一遍指出的事实。正如莱斯里・丹齐克，一位41岁的芝加哥戏剧导演兼母亲，所观察到的，当你十几岁或是二十几岁时，除非有特殊原因，你同任何人都有着或多或少的交情。大学室友能成为你最好的朋友，至少有一部分的原因是因为空间距离的接近。现在要成为朋友则需要理由。“我同周围的许多人相处愉快，但还没达到叫他们朋友的地步。相处愉快并不足以维持一段真正的友谊。”丹泽说到。
At first, finding new companions felt awkward. At 40 I couldn’t run up to people the way my 4-year-old daughters do in the playground and ask, “Will you be my friend?” “Every time you start a new relationship, you’re vulnerable again,” agrees Kathkeen Hall, founder and CEO of the Stress Institute, in Atlanta. “You’re asking, ‘Would you like to come into my life?’ It makes us self-conscious.一开始，寻找新伴侣让人感到尴尬。在40岁的年龄，我不可能像我岁的女儿在操场上做的那样，跑到别人面前问“你愿意做我的朋友吗？”“每开始一段新的友谊，你又会很敏感”凯瑟琳・霍尔，亚特兰大职业压力协会的创始人兼首席执行官也有同感，“在询问‘你愿意和我往来吗？’时，我们会感到很难为情。”
Fortunately, my discomfort soon passed. I realized that as a mature friend seeker my vulnerability risk was actually pretty low. If someone didn’t take me up on my offer, so what: I wasn’t in junior high, when I might have been rejected for having the wrong clothes or hair. At my age I have amassed enough self-esteem to tealize that I have plenty to offer. One women I met at a friend’s shower didn’t keep up our connection, even though we’d clicked instantly. But because there have been times when I’ve failed to follow through with women I’ve liked every much, I knew that her busyness was the likely explanation.幸运的是，我的不安感很快就过去了。我意识到，作为一个成熟的寻找朋友者，我冒的敏感风险事实上是很小的。如果有人不接受我的好意，那又怎样。我又不是在初中，那时要是服装或是发型出错可是会遭拒绝的。在我这个年龄，我已经积累了足够的自尊，知道自己可以给与很多。一位我在送礼会上遇到的女性朋友，虽然一见面就很投缘，却并没有和我保持联系。但是因为我有时也会疏于同自己非常喜欢的女性朋友保持联系，我相信她这样做大概是她很忙。
Friends That Make You a Better You
We’re all so busy, in fact, that mutual interests — say, in a project, class, or cause that we already make time for — become the perfect catalysts for bringing us in contact with candiates for camaraderie. Michelle Mertrs, 35, a teacher and mother of two in Wausau, Wisconsin, says a new friend she made at church came as a pleasant surprise. “In high school I chose friends based on their popularity and how being part of their circle might reflect on me. Now it’s our shared values and activities that count.” Mertes says her pal, with whom she organized the church’s youth programs, is nothing like her but their drive and organizational skills make them ideal friends.实际上，我们都很忙，共同的兴趣，比如说，在我们倾注了时间的项目上、班级里或事业上的共同兴趣，成为我们同潜在朋友发展友谊的最佳催化剂。米歇尔・默顿，35岁，住在威斯康星州沃索的一位教师兼两个孩子的母亲，谈到在教堂结交到的一位新朋友，令她又惊又喜。“在高中我选择朋友是看他受不受欢迎，看加入他们的圈子人们会怎么想我。现在重要的是我们的共同价值观和共同活动。”默顿说，这个与她一起组织过教会青年项目的朋友，同她一点也不像，但她们的干劲和组织能力使她们成为了理想的朋友。
Happliy, as awkward as making new friends can be, self-esteem issues do not factor in — or if they do, you can easily put them into prespective. Danzig tells of the mother of a child in her son’s preschool, a tall, beautiful woman who is married to a big-deal rock musician. “I said to my husband, she’s too cool for me,” she jokes. “I get intimidated by people. But once I got to know her, she turned out to be pretty laid-back and friendly.” In the end there was no chemistry between them, so they didn’t become good pals. “I realized that we weren’t each other’s type, but it wasn’t about hierarchy.” What midlife friendship is about, it seems, is reflecting the person you’ve become (or are still becoming) back at yourself, thus reinforcing the process you’ve made in your life.令人高兴的是，虽然结交新朋友可能使人不好意思，但是自尊心不再是一个问题，即使出问题，你也会很容易理性对待。丹齐克讲起她儿子学校的一个小孩妈妈，长得高挑漂亮，嫁给了一个知名的摇滚乐手，开玩笑说“我对我的丈夫说‘她对我来说太酷了些。’”“我被一些人给吓住了。可一旦对她熟悉了，我发现她很随意，很友善。”最后她们合不来，没有成为好朋友。“我意识到我们不是彼此的类型，但是这同等级无关。”中年人友谊的作用，似乎在反映你自身成了什么样的人（或是正在成为什么样的人），并因此而强化你在生活中所取得的进展。
Harlene Katzman, 41, a lawyer in New York City, notes that her oldest friends knew her back when she was less sure of herself. As much as she loves them, she believes they sometimes respond to issues in light of who she once was. On the other hand, “New friends know me as a more accomplished person,” says Katzman. “They see me as confident. An old chum has the goods on you. With recently made friends, you can turn over a new leaf.”哈琳・卡茨曼，41岁，一位纽约城的律师，谈到那些交往最久的老朋友们了解她的过去，而当时她还没有现在这么自信。虽然她爱那些老朋友，但她相信这些老朋友在处理问题时，仍然把她当成了过去的她。另一方面，“新朋友把我当成一个更有成就的人来结识。”卡茨曼说“她们认为我很自信。老朋友有着你的把柄。新朋友则让你重获新生。”
A new friend, chosen right, chosen right, can also help you point your boat in the direction you want to go. Hanna Dershowitz, 39, an attorney and mother in Los Angeles, found that a new acquaintance from work was exactly what she needed in a friend. In addition to liking and respecting Julia, Dershowitz had a feeling that the fit and athletic younger women would help her to get in shape. The two began working out together, and Dershowitz made sure to pursue the friendship actively. “She bring out my motivation and I really like that. She’s strong and successful, and she helps me emphaisze those things in myself.” I feel the same way about one of my new friends, Ronni, a stay-at-home morn whose daughter was in my girls’preschoool.一个新的朋友，如果选择正确，还能帮助你确定人生小船的航向。汉娜・德绍维兹，39岁，洛杉矶的一位律师兼母亲，发现一位工作上的新相识正好提供了她所需要的友谊。除了喜欢和尊敬朱丽亚，德绍维兹有一种感觉，这个健康、喜欢运动的年轻女士将会帮助她获得健康。两个人开始一起锻炼。德绍维兹确信自己是在积极地寻求友谊。“她激发我的动机，这是我非常喜欢的。她强壮，成功，帮助我扬长避短。”我对罗尼，我的一个新朋友，一个全职妈妈，她女儿和我女儿在同一个学前班，有着同样的感觉。
Finding What’s Missing
I was drawn to her because she is lovely and warm. But what made me decide to be friends with her was what I knew I could learn from her. She makes the parts of motherhood I found overwhelming seem not only possible but easy, even fun. I like her resourcefulness, her patience, her calm in the face of toddler anarchy.我被她所吸引是因为她可爱、热情。但我下决心同她做朋友是因为我知道我可以向她学习。她把我认为不堪重负的母亲的职责不仅变成可能，而且变得很容易，甚至很有趣。我喜欢她在应对无法无天的小孩子时所表现出来的随机应变，耐心和镇静。
When I met Ronni I was working full-time, my marriage was as stressed as I was, and any time I spent with my kids felt like time away from something I needed to be doing to keep the whole machine running. We never discussed it, but my friendship with Ronni contributed to my decision to work part-time, so that I can enjoy my children in the way she does hers. She inspired me to take inventory of my own life and to attend to how it wasn’t making me happy.当我遇到罗尼的时候我有一份全职的工作，我的婚姻和我的人一样处于压力之下。每次花时间和孩子们在一起的时候，都感到占用了自己使一切正常运行所需的时间。我们从未讨论过这个问题，但是我同罗尼的友谊，促使我下决定做非全职工作。这样我就可以以她的方式享受亲子之乐了。她鼓励我创新自己的生活方式，鼓励我留心怎么会过得不如意。
I keep up with my old friends as much as distance allows, but I’m finding my new friends equally nourishing. “She and I both say, ‘I wasn’t even looking for a friend when I met you,’ ” says Jenna McCarthy, 39, a mother of two in Santa Barbara of her friend of three year, Kirsten. “ But until I met her, I hadn’t realized how much was missing from my life.I’m happier now that she’s my friend.”只要距离许可，我尽量同老朋友们保持联系。但是我发现新朋友同样给我帮助。“她和我都说‘遇到你的时候根本没有想找朋友这回事。’”简娜・麦卡西，39岁，两个孩子的母亲，住在圣巴巴拉，这样说她认识了三年的朋友，“但是直到我遇到她，我才意识到原来自己的生活缺了多少的东西。她成为我的朋友让我比过去快乐多了。”
Be a Better Friend
While you’re busy making new friends, remember that you still need to nurture your old ones. We asked Marla Paul, auther of The Friendship Crisis: Finding, Making and keeping Friends When You’re Not a Kid Anymore, for the best ways to maintain these important relationships.当你忙于结交新朋友的时候，别忘了还要继续培养同老朋友间的友谊。就维持这层珍贵关系的最佳方法，我们询问了玛勒・保罗，她是 《友情危机：当你不再是孩子时，寻找、结交和拥有朋友》的作者。
·Keep in touch. Your friends should be a priority; schedule regular lunch dates or coffee catch-up sessions, no matter how busy you are.保持联系。应该优先考虑你的朋友；不管你有多忙，定期安排聚在一起吃午餐或喝咖啡。
·Know her business. Keep track of important events in a friend’s life and show your support. Call or e-mail to let her know you’re thinking of her.了解她的事情。记下朋友一生中的重要事件，并给与你的支持。给她打电话或是发电子邮件，让她知道你在想她。
·Speak your mind. Tell a friend (politely) if something she did really upset you. If you can’t be totally honest, then you need to reexamine the relationship. 说出你的想法。如果有朋友做了让你不快的事情，（有礼貌地）告诉他。如果你无法做到真心诚意，那么你需要重新审视你们之间的关系。
·Accept her flaws. No one is perfect, so work around her quirks — she’s chronically late, or she’s a bit negative — to cut down on frustration and fights.接受她的缺点。没有人是完美的。所以要迁就她的怪癖——她老是迟到，或是她的消极——以减少失望和争吵。
·Boost her ego. Heartfelt compliments make everyone feel great, so tell her how much you love her new sweater or what a great job she did on a work project.增强她的自尊心。发自内心的赞美会让任何人都感到愉悦。不妨告诉她你有多喜欢她的新毛衣，或是她的某个工作项目做得有多棒。
Families
Each of us is born into one family not of our choosing. If we’re going to go around devising new ones, we might as well have the luxury of picking their members ourselves. Clever picking might result in new families whose benefits would surpass or at least equal those of the old. The new ones by definition cannot spawn us — as soon as they do that, they stop being new — but there is plenty they can do. I have seen them work wonders. As a mermber in reasonable standing of six or seven tribes in addition to the one I the one I was born to, I have been trying to figure which earmarks are common to both kinds of families.我们每个人都出生在自己无法选择的家庭之中。我们长大后将组建新的家庭，这就使得我们有了自己选择成员的奢侈待遇。明智地选择其成员而组建的新家庭，其优势将超过你原有的家庭，或至少与原有家庭持平。但新家庭原则上不能孕育出我们——一旦它那样的话，就失去了新家庭的意义——但是，这样的家庭还是能产生很多奇迹。我目睹了许许多多家庭缔造的奇迹。除了我自己出生的家庭之外，我曾经在六七个不同的部落有一些体验。藉此，我试图描述一下这两种家庭的特征吧。
Good families have a chief, or a heroine, or a founder — someone around whom others cluster, whose achievements as the Yiddish word has it, let them kvell, and whose example spurs them on to like feats. Some blood dynasties produce such figures regularly; others languish for as many as five generations between demigods, wondering with each new pregnancy whether this, at last, might be the messianic baby who will redeem us. Look , is there not something gubernationrial about her footstep, or musical about the way he bangs with his spoon on his cup? All clans, of all kinds, need such a figure now and then. Sometimes clans based on water rather than blood harbor several such personages at one time. The Bloomsbury Group in London six decades ago was not much hampered by its lack of a temporal history.好家庭通常有一个酋长，或女英雄，或家族创始人——大家集聚在他周围，他的功绩，就像意第绪语所说的那样，让大家觉得骄傲自豪，其作用能不断激励他们好大喜功往前冲。一些以血缘关系组建的王朝会有规律地产生这样的英雄人物，而其他王朝却要苦苦等待这样半人半神的人物长达五代之久，时常想着下一位出生的宝贝会不会是能救赎大家的救世主。大家就会看看这位新出生的宝贝走路有没有统治者的步态，拿勺子敲杯子发出的声音是不是音调很优美？不管什么样的氏族时不时地都需要这样一位领袖。有时一些非血缘关系组建的氏族也曾工废产生些类似的人物。六十年前在伦敦布卢姆斯伯里文化圈里就不乏这样的现代历史的例证。
Good famililies have a switchboard operator — someone like my mother who cannot help but keep track of what all the others are up to, who plays Houston Mission Control to everyone else’s Apollo. This role, like the foregoing one, is assumed rather than assigned. Someone always volunteers for it. That person often also has the instincts of an archivist, and feels driven to keep scrapbooks and photogrph albums up to date, so that the clan can see proof of its own continuity.好家庭得有个交换台操作员——就像我妈妈，不得不去了解其他人都在做什么，她就好比休斯敦航天地面指挥中心对阿波罗号，她掌管着每个人的动态。这责任，就像前面提到的一样，是主动承担的而不是指派的。总是有人主动地去做。这人得有档案管理员的天性，受驱使般地去更新剪贴簿和相册，以便大家都能看到整个家族绵绵瓜瓞的证明。
Good families are much to all their members, but everything to none. Good families are fortresses with many windows and doors to the outer world. The blood clans I feel most drawn to were founded by parents who are nearly as devoted to whatever it is they do outside as they are to each other and their children. Their curiosity and passion are contagious. Everybody, where they live, is busy. Paint is spattered on eyeglasses. Mud lurks under fingernails. Person-to-person calls come in the middle of the night from Tokyo and Brussels. Catchers’ mitts, ballet slippers, overdue library books and other signs of extra-familial concerns are everywhere.好家庭对家庭所有成员来说都是一致的，而不是因人而异。好家庭是有多个通向外界的门窗的堡垒。最吸引我的以血缘关系建立的家庭，是其父母不论在家里家外，对外人还是对待家庭成员或孩子，他们都竭尽全力真诚相待。他们的志趣和激情都具有感染力。和他们居住的每个人都被感染地忙碌着。不是染料溅到眼镜上了，就是手指甲有泥垢了，或许彼此半夜在东京和布鲁塞尔打电话聊天。棒球手套、芭蕾鞋、过期未还的图书，还有家外的一些琐碎事，随处可见。
Good families are hospitable. Knowing that hosts need guests as much as guests need hosts, they are generous with honorary memberships for friends, whom they urge to come early and often and to stay late. Such clans exude a vivid sense of surrounding rings of relatives, neighbors, teachers, students and godparents, any of whom at any time might break or slide into the inner circle. Inside that circle a wholesome, tacit emotional feudalism develops: you give me protection, I’ll give you fealty. Such treaties begin with, but soon go far beyond, the jolly exchange of pie at Thanksgiving for cake on birthdays. It means you can ask me to supervise your children for the fortnight you will be in the hospital, and that however inconvenient this might be for me, I shall manage to. It means I can phone you on what for me is a dreay, wretched Sunday afternoon and for you is the eve of a deadline, knowing you will tell me to come right over, if only to watch you type. It means we need not dissemble.好家庭是好客的。主人需要客人光临，正如客人需要主人招待一样。主人经常鼓励朋友多来玩，并希望他们多逗留，这是因为他们觉得很荣幸地款待这些贵客。这样的家族慢慢地会对周围的亲戚圈子、街坊邻里，教师团队，学生群体以及教父教母流露出一种很生动鲜活的感觉，他们很容易走进这些群体之中。这样美好无形的类似封建制度的关系便形成了：你保护我，我就对你忠诚。这样的关系由我拿感恩节的馅饼换你的生日蛋糕开始，但很快这种关系就不仅如此了。这就意味着，如果你生病住院，你可以让我照管你的孩子们两周，不管多么不方便，我都会去做。 这也意味着，糟糕的星期天下午我可以给你打电话，或许正是你交稿的期限，但你会让我直接过去，哪怕只是看着你打字。这意味着我们不需要掩饰。
Good families prize their rituals. Nothing welds a family more than these. Rituals are vital especially for clans without histories, because they evoke a past, imply a future, and hint at continuity. No line in the Seder service at Passover reassures more than the last:“Next year in Jerusalem!” A clan becomes more of a clan each time it gather to observe a fixed ritual (Christmas, birthdays, Thanksgiving, and so on), grieve at a funeral (anyone may come to most funerals; those who do declare their tribalness), and devises a new rite of its own. Equinox breakfasts and all-white dinners can be at least as welding as Memorial Day parades. Several of us in the old Life magazine years used to meet for lunch every Pearl Harbor Day, preferably to eat some politically neutral fare like smorgasbord, to “forgive” our only ancestrally Japanese colleague Irene Kubota Neves. For that and other reasons we become, and remain, a sort of family. “Rituals,” a California friend of mine said, “aren’t just externals and holidays. They are the performances of our lives. They are a kind of short hand. They can’t be decreed. My mother used to try to decree them. She’d make such a goddamn fuss over what we talked about at dinner, aiming at Topics of Common Interest, topics that celebrated our cohesion as a family. Thesse performances were always hollow, because the phenomenology of the moment got sacrificed for the idea of the moment. Real rituals are discovered in retrospect. They choose themselves.” A lucky clan includes a born mythologizer, like my blood sister, who has the gift of apprehending such a moment when she sees it, and who cannot help but invent new rituals everywhere she goes.好家庭注重仪式。没有什么能比这些仪式更能够把全家团聚在一起了。尤其对一些没什么家族史的家庭来说更为重要，因为这些仪式能让大家回想过去，展望未来，这预示着绵延不断。没有比在逾越节家宴上的一句“明年在耶路撒冷见！”更让大家备感安慰。每一次家族成员聚在一起举行特定的仪式（诸如，圣诞节，生日，感恩节，等等），或者在葬礼上伤心（任何人都可以参加，只要他宣称自己隶属这一部落），或者形成自己特有的新礼节，这些都使得一个家族更加凝聚在一起。春分早餐或全白餐照样能像阵亡将士纪念日游行一样把大家团结起来。我们以前在《生活》杂志的老朋友过去时常在珍珠港纪念日这天聚在一起吃个中午饭，谈论一些政治上中立的大杂烩话题，并“宽恕”Irene kubota Neves，在《生活》的同仁中只有他的祖先是日本人。如此这样，我们不自觉地就成了一家人。我的加利福尼亚州的一位朋友曾说：“仪式不仅仅是外在形式或者过过假期而已。仪式是我们生命的一种表现。仪式类似于一种速记。仪式不能刻意地要求命令。我母亲过去常常试图命令要求这些刻板仪式。她总是为我们吃饭时谈论的话题担心忧虑，刻意让大家谈论歌颂家庭和睦的共同感兴趣的话题。但是这样表现是徒然空洞的，因为一时的表象牺牲了当时的真实想法。这些仪式是在回顾过去中发现的。这些仪式在特定的时刻出现，而且只出现一次，但大家的记忆就会萦绕着这些仪式。不是你刻意选择这些时刻，而是它自动形成的。一个幸运的家族通常会有一个天生的神话大师，就像我妹妹，她有这样的天赋：不管她在哪里，一旦意识到这样的机会，她就会抓住并制造新的仪式。
Good families are affectionate. This of course is a matter of style. I know clans whose members greet each other with gingerly handshakes or, in what pass for kisses, with hurried brushes of side jawbones, as if the object were to touch not the lips but the ears. I don’t see how such people manage. “The tribe that does not hug,” as someone who has been part of many ad hoc families recently wrote to me, “is no tribe at all. More and more I realize that everybody, regardless of age, needs to be hugged and comforted in a brotherly or sisterly way now and then. Preferably now.”好家庭是充满爱的。当然，这是行为方式的问题。就我所知，一些家族成员见面打招呼时小心翼翼地握握手，或者彼此轻触下颌就算是亲吻，好像应该去接触的部位不是双唇而是耳部。我不明白这些人是怎么办到的。一个属于很多特别家庭的人最近给我写信说道：“见面不拥抱的部落根本就不能成为部落”。我越来越意识到，不论我们年纪多大，我们都需要时时有兄弟姐妹般的拥抱或慰藉，最好就现在。
Good families, not just the blood kind, find some way to connect with posterity. “To forge a link in the humble chain of being, encircling heirs to ancestors, ”as Michael Novak has written, “is to walk within a circle of magic as primitive as humans knew in caves.” He is talking of course about babies, feeling them leap in wombs, giving them suck. Parenthood, however, is a state which some miss by chance and others by design, and a vocation to which not all are called. Some of us, like the novelist Richard P. Brickner, “look on as others name their children who in turn name their own lives, devising their own flags from their parents’cloth.” What are we who lack children to do? Build houses? Plant trees? Write books or symphonies or laws? Perhaps, but even if we do these things, there still should be children on the sidelines, if not at the center, of our lives. It is a sadly improverished tribe that does not allow access to, and make much of , some children. Not too much, of course: it has truly been said that never in history have so many educated people devoted so much attention to so few children. Attention, in excess, can turn to fawning, which isn’t much better than negelect. Still, if we don’t regularly see and talk to and laugh with people who can expect to outlive us by twenty years or so, we had better get busy and find some.好家庭，不单单是血缘关系建立的家庭，应找到和后代承接联系的方式。迈克尔・诺瓦克写道，“在卑微的生存链中锻造一环，连接后代与祖先，这充满魔力的一环原始的一如生活在岩洞时代的人所了解的一样”。很显然，他说的是孩子，感觉他们在子宫里跳跃，给他们哺乳。为人父母不是人人有行的天职，有些是无心错过，有些人则刻意规避。我们有些人，就像小说家理查德・布莱科纳看着别人“给孩子们命名，而孩子们也赋予了他们生活的意义，他们用父辈的衣钵设计出了自己家族的旗帜”。那么我们没有孩子的干些什么？盖房子，植树，写书，作曲，立法？也许吧，但即使我们做这些，我们还是需要孩子在身边，即使孩子并不是我们生活的中心。不能孕育后代的家族是贫穷的。当然，也不能过度关注孩子，如此之多的受过教育的人如此投入地关注如此之少的孩子，这在历史上是鲜有发生的。过度关注就会变成奉承，这不比被忽视好到哪里去。如果你不能和自己小二十几岁的孩子们常常说笑交流的话，那么你最好行动起来，找些这样的人。
Good families also honor their elders. The wider the age range, the stronger the tribe. Jean-Paul Sartre and Margaret Mead, to name two spectacularly confident former children, have both remarked on the central importance of grandparents in their own early lives. Grandparents now are in much more abundant supply than they were a genration or two ago when old age was more rare. If actual grandparents are not at hand, no family should have too hard a time finding substitute ones to whom to give unfeigned homage. The Soviet Union’s enchantment with day care centers, I have heard, stems at least in part from the state’s eagerness to keep children away from their presumably subversive grandparents. Let that be a lesson to clans based on interest as well as to those based on genes.好的家庭尊重其长辈。家族成员岁数相差越大，家族往往越强大。列举两个出众孩子的实例，让・保罗・萨特和玛格丽特・米德都承认祖父母在孩童时代对他们有很重要的影响。和过去一两代人相比，现在老龄人多得多了。如果现实的祖父母不在身边，这些家庭也不难找到老年人来充当祖父母的角色，并给予真诚的敬意。我听说，苏联曾经一度流行日托，为的是让孩子远离可能会是颠覆份子的祖父母，给他们呵护和积极影响。这对于不论是基于兴趣组成的群体还是由基因连接的家族而言都是一个教训。
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