小说推荐【For One More Day Author: Mitch Albom】

林贝卡 · 2007-03-09 16:43:48Z

小说推荐【For One More Day Author: Mitch Albom】简介

450) this.width=450}" align="baseline" border="0" />

This is the story of Charley, a child of divorce who is always forced to choose between his mother and his father. He grows into a man and starts a family of his own.

But one fateful weekend, he leaves his mother to secretly be with his father - and she dies while he is gone. This haunts him for years. It unravels his own young family. It leads him to depression and drunkenness.

One night, he decides to take his life. But somewhere between this world and the next, he encounters his mother again, in their hometown, and gets to spend one last day with her - the day he missed and always wished he'd had. He asks the questions many of us yearn to ask, the questions we never ask while our parents are alive.

By the end of this magical day, Charley discovers how little he really knew about his mother, the secret of how her love saved their family, and how deeply he wants the second chance to save his own.

故事以一对母子为主角，他们的关系不仅维持了今世，更在一个来世的时空中相会。

主角因父母的离异，必须在父亲的要求下做出跟父亲或是母亲生活的决定，最后他选择了父亲，不过父亲却在他年少时抛弃了他. 他重新回到母亲身边，在一次与父亲见面之时，母亲却死了。

十年来，他心中带着愧疚，过着潦倒的生活。正当他想要寻死之际，却发现母亲依然活在人世，母亲告诉他当时的难言之隐，在母亲的教诲下，主角重拾对人生的热情和方向。

这多出来的一天，却改变了他的一生。

About Author

Mitch Albom, the celebrated Detroit Free Press sports columnist who has been suspended for fudging facts in a recent piece, has a bigger name as one of the nation's best-selling authors. His works consist of "Tuesdays with Morrie" (1997) and "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" (2003).

米奇·艾尔邦(Mitch Albom)，原本是美国最著名的体育新闻记者之一。他创作的第一本非体育类书《相约星期二》后，转而成为一位畅销书作家。另外一本著作《在天堂遇见的五个人》，中文版销售已逾三十万册。

For One More Day

Chapter One

Now, when I say I saw my dead mother, I mean just that. I saw her. She was
standing by the dugout, wearing a lavender jacket, holding her pocketbook. She
didn't say a word. She just looked at me.

I tried to lift myself in her direction then fell back, a bolt of pain
shooting through my muscles. My brain wanted to shout her name, but there was no
sound from my throat.

I lowered my head and put my palms together. I pushed hard again, and this
time I lifted myself halfway off the ground. I looked up.

She was gone.

I don't expect you to go with me here. It's crazy, I know. You don't see dead
people. You don't get visits. You don't fall off of a water tower, miraculously
alive despite your best attempt to kill yourself, and see your dearly departed
mother holding her pocketbook on the third-base line.

I have given it all the thought that you are probably giving it right now; a
hallucination, a fantasy, a drunken dream, the mixed-up brain on its mixed-up
way. As I say, I don't expect you to go with me here.

But this is what happened. She had been there. I had seen her. I lay on the
field for an indeterminate amount of time, then I rose to my feet and I got
myself walking. I brushed the sand and debris from my knees and forearms. I was
bleeding from dozens of cuts, most of them small, a fewbigger. I could taste
blood in my mouth.

I cut across a familiar patch of grass. A morning wind shook the trees and
brought a sweep of yellow leaves, like a small, fluttering rainstorm. I had
twice failed to kill myself. How pathetic was that?

I headed toward my old house, determined to finish the job......

* * *

My father once told me, "You can be a mama's boy or a daddy's boy. But you can't
be both."

So I was a daddy's boy. I mimicked his walk. I mimicked his deep, smoky
laugh. I carried a baseball glove because he loved baseball, and I took every
hardball he threw, even the ones that stung my hands so badly I thought I would
scream.

When school was out, I would run to his liquor store on Kraft Avenue and stay
until dinnertime, playing with empty boxes in the storeroom, waiting for him to
finish. We would ride home together in his sky blue Buick sedan, and sometimes
we would sit in the driveway as he smoked his Chesterfields and listened to the
radio news.

I have a younger sister named Roberta, and back then she wore pink ballerina
slippers almost everywhere. When we ate at the local diner, my mother would yank
her to the "ladies'" room-her pink feet sliding across the tile-while my
father took me to the "gents'." In my young mind I figured this was life's
assignment: me with him, her with her. Ladies'. Gents'. Mama's. Daddy's.

A daddy's boy.

I was a daddy's boy, and I remained a daddy's boy right up to a hot,
cloudless Saturday morning in the spring of my fifth grade year. We had a
doubleheader scheduled that day against the Cardinals, who wore red wool
uniforms and were sponsored by Connor's Plumbing Supply.

The sun was already warming the kitchen when I entered in my long socks,
carrying my glove, and saw my mother at the table smoking a cigarette. My mother
was a beautiful woman, but she didn't look beautiful that morning. She bit her
lip and looked away from me. I remember the smell of burnt toast and I thought
she was upset because she messed up breakfast.

"I'll eat cereal," I said.

I took a bowl from the cupboard.

She cleared her throat. "What time is your game, honey?"

"Do you have a cold?" I asked.

She shook her head and put a hand to her cheek. "What time is your game?"

"I dunno." I shrugged. This was before I wore a watch.

I got the glass bottle of milk and the big box of corn puffs. I poured the
corn puffs too fast and some bounced out of the bowl and onto the table. My
mother picked them up, one at a time, and put them in her palm.

"I'll take you," she whispered. "Whenever it is."

"Why can't Daddy take me?" I asked.

"Daddy's not here."

"Where is he?"

She didn't answer.

"When's he coming back?"

She squeezed the corn puffs and they crumbled into floury dust.

I was a mama's boy from that day on.......

* * *

The house was musty, and there was a faint, sweet smell of carpet cleaner,
as if someone (the caretaker we paid?) had recently shampooed it. I stepped past
the hallway closet and the banister we used to slide down as kids. I entered the
kitchen, with its old tile floor and its cherrywood cabinets. I opened the
refrigerator because I was looking for something alcoholic; by now this was a
reflex with me.

And I stepped back.

There was food inside.

Tupperware. Leftover lasagna. Skim milk. Apple juice. Raspberry yogurt. For a
fleeting moment, I wondered if someone had moved in, a squatter of some kind,
and this was now his place, the price we paid for ignoring it for so long.

I opened a cabinet. There was Lipton tea and a bottle of Sanka. I opened
another cabinet. Sugar. Morton salt. Paprika. Oregano. I saw a dish in the sink,
soaking under bubbles. I lifted it and slowly lowered it, as if trying to put it
back in place.

And then I heard something.

It came from upstairs.

"Charley?"

Again.

"Charley?"

It was my mother's voice.

I ran out the kitchen door, my fingers wet with soapy water..........

* * *
"Charley?"

What I remember most, hiding on that back porch, is how fast my breath left
me. One second I had been at the refrigerator, dragging through the motions, the
next second my heart was racing so fast I thought no amount of oxygen could
sustain it. I was shaking. The kitchen window was at my back, but I didn't dare
look through it. I had seen my dead mother, and now I had heard her voice. I had
broken parts of my body before, but this was the first time I worried I had
damaged my mind.

I stood there, my lungs heaving in and out, my eyes locked on the earth in
front of me. As kids, we'd called this our "backyard," but it was just a square
of grass. I thought about bounding across it to a neighbor's house.

And then the door opened.

And my mother stepped outside.

My mother.

Right there. On that porch.

And she turned to me.

And she said, "What are you doing out here? It's cold."

NOW, I DON'T know if I can explain the leap I made. It's like jumping off the
planet. There is everything you know and there is everything that happens. When
the two do not line up, you make a choice. I saw my mother, alive, in front of
me. I heard her say my name again. "Charley?" She was the only one who ever
called me that.

Was I hallucinating? Should I move toward her? Was she like a bubble that
would burst? Honestly, at this point, my limbs seemed to belong to someone else.

"Charley? What's the matter? You're all cut."

She was wearing blue slacks and a white sweater now-she was always dressed,
it seemed, no matter how early in the morning-and she looked to be no older
than the last time I had seen her, on her seventy-ninth birthday, wearing these
red-rimmed glasses she got as a present. She turned her palms gently upward and
she beckoned me with her eyes and, I don't know, those glasses, her skin, her
hair, her opening the back door the way she used to when I threw tennis balls
off the roof of our house. Something melted inside of me, as if her face gave
off heat. It went down my back. It went to my ankles. And then something broke,
I almost heard the snap, the barrier between belief and di*****elief.

I gave in.

Off the planet.

"Charley?" she said. "What's wrong?"

I did what you would have done.
I hugged my mother as if I'd never let her go.

(Continues...)

For One More Day
Author: Mitch Albom
List Price: $21.95
Pages: 197
Publisher: Hyperion
ISBN: 1401303277

Source : China Daily

450) this.width=450}" border="0" />
450) this.width=450" />

请阅读更多我的博客文章>>>

•	For One More Day
•	触不到的恋人
•	西方绘画中的十大美女
•	Follow Your Heart
•	世界十大未发掘的神秘宝藏

所有跟帖：