■心中有爱，眼里才有爱
Romance Is in the Eyes of the Beholder
◎Tina Runge/蒂娜·朗格
Life is so very busy. I think at times, we all get lost in the hustle and bustle of everyday life that we forget what it was that made us fall in love with our spouse or our significant other. Thankfully, I remembered.
My husband works hard. Many times his hours are long and his employment usually takes him away from the home front about one quarter of the year. I’m not complaining, mind you, because that was the same job that enabled me to be a stay-at-home mom and pursue my dream of writing. Yes, I’m a mother of three active boys and a published romance author. Naturally you’d think my life is full of romance. It is. My days consist of plotting and arranging the romantic lives of my characters so that the outcome is the proverbial “happily ever after”. I love happily ever afters. This story is one of those.
I’ve never considered my husband of seventeen years to really be the romantic type. Sweet as he is, he isn’t one to make dinner reservations at an exclusive[17] restaurant, or buy me a mushy, lovey-dovey card “just because”.
名人语库
～Leo Tolstoy
——列夫·托尔斯泰
生活总是太匆忙。有些时候，我们会迷失在这忙忙碌碌的庸常生活中，甚至遗忘了当初和我们的爱人是如何深深相爱的。幸好，我还记得。
我丈夫的工作很辛苦。他的工作时间总是很长，一年中大约1/4的时间都不在家，而是在外面奔波忙碌着。当然，我并不是在抱怨；正是因为他的这份工作，才能让我做一个居家母亲，天天待在家里一边照顾孩子们，一边专心写作以实现我的写作梦想。没错，我是三个活泼好动的男孩的母亲，同时我还是一名写爱情小说的作家。很自然地，你会觉得，我在生活中一定经历了很多浪漫的爱情故事。的确如此。我每天的工作就是为我小说里的主人公们设计各种浪漫的情节，安排他们的爱情生活，并在最后以俗话所说的“从此幸福地生活在一起”这样的美好结局而收场。我喜欢这种大团圆的结局，接下来我要讲的也是一个这样的故事。
我从未觉得相伴17年的丈夫是一个真正浪漫的人。尽管他对我很好，但他并不会去高级餐馆订餐，也不会给我买写着“只是因为”的那种情意绵绵的浪漫卡片。在一年四季的各种节日里，他的确给我送过花，
I do get flowers for all the proper occasions and the cards do come then, but is that really romantic? I never considered it to be, especially when the vast majority of the rest of the female population was getting them, too. I had always wished for a little more...
One day, while I was working, several strange “incidences”, for lack of a better word, crept into my mind. I was trying to concentrate on my current work-in-progress but “they” wouldn’t leave me alone.“They” weren’t any huge revelation or any spectacular plot points I could use for the rancher hero I was working on at the time, either.
They didn’t have to do with the elusive[18] heroine I was still trying to get a grasp on. No. These were different, very different. They were about my husband. For some strange reason I couldn’t get out of my head the last business trip he went on. He brought me back a pound of Ghirardelli malt balls and the romance novel I’d been meaning to buy. Then there was that fax I got that simply said, I love you. Could those two things fall under the romantic category? I decided they could. They most certainly should.
Other special moments flooded my mind as if a little keeper in my head had opened some “damn of memories”. I remembered, vividly, the time my husband got the kids to bed early. No small feat, let me tell you! I was in the basement scrubbing a baseball uniform, wondering what made me angrier, those coaches who encouraged kids to slide when it was raining and muddy, or the league who purchased the white pants.
When I came up from finishing the chore, a scented bubble bath had been drawn, wine poured and candles lit. Has anyone ever been bathed by their spouse or significant other in an atmosphere like that? I can tell you firsthand that that was romantic! Those white baseball pants were soon
也写过祝福卡片，但是，那就是浪漫吗？我从没觉得这些就是所谓的浪漫，尤其考虑到大多数女性在节日里都会收到这样的礼物时，更是如此。我总是希望能有更特别一点的东西……
有一天，我正在写作，忽然有几件奇怪的“小事件”偷偷地溜进了我的脑海中。“小事件”，一时我找不到更好的词来形容，暂且就如此称呼它们吧。我努力地想集中精力继续手头的工作，但这些“小事件”无法让我清静。它们并不是什么伟大的发现，也不是什么令人惊叹的小说桥段，可以让我用在当时正在写的小说的农场男主人公身上。
它们跟我正在努力塑造、但尚未成型的模糊的主人公没有丝毫关系。它们很特别，非常特别，因为它们关乎于我的丈夫。奇怪的是，丈夫上一次因公出差时做的一些事总是挥之不去，在我的脑海里时不时地浮现出来。他给我带回1磅哥罗多利麦芽球，还有我一直想买的一本爱情小说。他还在出差途中给我发来一份简单得不能再简单的传真——“我爱你”。这些能算是浪漫吗？我想应该算吧。毫无疑问，应该算。
我脑子里记忆的大门似乎顿时敞开了，其他一些特别的瞬间也如潮水般奔涌而来。我清晰地记得往日的一幕一幕，它们是如此生动，仿佛就在眼前。那可是一次不小的壮举，让我慢慢说给你听吧。那天，丈夫早早地哄孩子们上床睡觉了。我在地下室一遍又一遍地刷着孩子们的棒球服，心里不免愤愤然嘀咕着：那些教练为什么总是鼓励孩子们在下雨天泥泞的操场上摸爬滚打，让他们频频滑倒；而棒球联赛的组织者怎么会购买白色的棒球裤。
我做完杂活回到房间的时候，香气扑鼻的泡泡浴已经准备好了，周围点着蜡烛，红酒也摆在一旁。有人曾享受过爱人给你准备的如此温馨的沐浴吗？我可以用我的亲身经历告诉你：那就是浪漫！白色的棒球裤很快就被忘记了，教练们也得到了我的原谅。我记得，还有一次，那时
forgotten and the coaches all forgiven. Then I fondly remembered another time, when the kids were at Grandma’s. My so-called unromantic hubby packed us both a sandwich and we rode bikes to the covered bridge in our town. We sat there, holding hands, eating and watching the geese and ducks. Just the two of us, just “being”.
It hit me, then, as I stared at my computer monitor, the words “Ray loves Tina”, endlessly floating across the screen. The screen saver was something else my sneaky husband had changed once before going out of town. How unfair I’d always been in my thinking. Was my husband romantic? Heavens, yes! I realized I could go on and on with those special moments, all the way back to when we first got married.
You may not think it’s romantic for a man to travel on business with a container of deodorant that has his wife’s picture taped to the front, or finding Hershey hugs and kisses that had been strategically[19] hidden all over the house because he wants you to know he misses you and is thinking about you while he’s gone, but I sure do.
I know it’s been said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder[20], but I think the same goes for romance. We all need to look for those special moments. And cherish them! I’m just thankful this romance author finally reflected and realized, again, what a hero she’s married to!
孩子们都在祖母家里。我所说的那个并不浪漫的丈夫，给我俩一人准备了一个三明治，然后我们一起骑车前往小镇上的一座小桥。我们坐在小桥边，手拉着手，吃着三明治，看着河里的鸭子和鹅。只有我们两个人，只是在一起静静地待着。
我回过神来，盯着电脑显示器，一串文字忽然跳了出来——“瑞爱蒂娜”，它不断地在屏幕上晃动飘浮。我被深深地打动了。一定是丈夫出门之前偷偷修改了屏幕保护程序的设置。而我总是沉浸在自己的思维里，不曾发觉任何蛛丝马迹，这太不公平了。我的丈夫浪漫吗？天哪，这还用问吗？我发现，我可以一遍又一遍不停地回味所有这些美妙瞬间，一直回忆到我们刚刚结婚时的情景。
你可能觉得，丈夫出差时带着的除臭剂外壳上贴着妻子照片，这算不上浪漫；或者你可能觉得，妻子总是时不时在家里这个或那个地方发现丈夫精心藏好的“好时”巧克力，以此来表达他外出时对妻子一刻不停的思念，这也并没什么浪漫可言。但是，这一切，在我看来，就是浪漫，而且是十足的浪漫。
心中有美，眼里才能看到美。我想，爱情也是一样，心中有爱，眼里才能看到爱。我们都需要用心、用眼睛去寻找那些美好的瞬间，并好好珍惜它们。我很庆幸，我这个写爱情小说的作家，最终又一次意识到自己嫁给了一位多好的男主人公！