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Pivoting1) from a life less loud into all the talk at my family’s Christmas gathering is like stepping off a plane from the wintry north into the heat of the tropics. I’m shocked for a second or two. Disoriented for several more. Then warmed and thrilled. Those are the feelings that last.

从一种不那么喧闹的生活跨入家人圣诞聚会时的喧嚣，就好像乘飞机从冬季严寒的北方进入酷暑难耐的热带。刹那间，我感到一种震撼。随之而来的是一种找不着北的感觉。接着便感到温暖和兴奋。这样的感觉会一直持续下去。

My brother Mark is talking, his thunderous voice scaled2) to be heard above the din3). My brother Harry is talking, with even more force, to be heard above Mark. My sister, Adelle, and I can’t precisely match their volume and don’t care to try, but we have patience, determination. We wait for some slack between syllables—for little cracks in the great wall of talk—and shimmy4) in. We’ve got plenty to say ourselves.

我弟弟马克说个不停，他那雷鸣般的声音为了盖住周围的嘈杂而越来越高。我弟弟哈利也是滔滔不绝，他的嗓门更大，这样才能盖住马克的声音。妹妹阿黛尔和我根本无法和他们的嗓音抗衡，也无心和他们抗衡，但我们有耐心，有决心。我们抓住他们话语的间隙——话语的壁垒间每一个细小的间隙——灵巧地挤进去。我们俩也有很多话要说啊。




Everyone does, my father and my siblings-in-law and my 11 nieces and nephews, except perhaps the one or two going through a quiet phase, which will end. It has to. In my family talking is like breathing, necessary for survival.

每个人都有很多话要说，包括我爸爸、弟媳、妹夫，还有11个侄子、侄女、外甥、外甥女。这其中可能有一两个处在比较低落的安静期，不过他们的安静总会结束，这是必须的。对我的家人来说，说话就像呼吸一样，没有它就活不下去。

At the high point of this particular Christmas weekend there will be 19 of us under one roof—Harry’s—and we’ll make sound enough for double or triple that number. It’s fortunate that the houses in his suburb are set far apart. Otherwise neighbors might complain.

今年圣诞节的这个周末，我们在巅峰时刻会有19人同在一个屋檐下——在哈利家。而我们所发出的声音足以达到这个人数的两倍甚至三倍。幸好他是住在郊区，和邻居家的房子间隔较远，不然邻居们该抱怨了。

Not all families are like ours. I’ve noticed. In a restaurant just the other night, I observed a young man and two older people who were almost certainly his parents let minutes go by without a word spoken. They weren’t eating then, or absorbed in iPhones or BlackBerrys, and they didn’t seem to be stewing5).

我注意到，并非所有的家庭都像我们这样。几天前的一个晚上，在一家饭店里，我注意到一个年轻人和两位年龄较大的很可能是他父母的人。他们好几分钟都没有说过一句话。他们当时并不是在吃饭，也不是在全神贯注地玩iPhone或者黑莓手机，而且他们看上去并不因此而感到不安。

Had they somehow run out of things to say? Or was this an elective lull6), a restorative pause that gave them more comfort than conversation? I didn’t know what to make of7) them and had to force myself to stop staring. They were that exotic to me.

是他们没有话可说了吗？还是他们有意选择沉默，停顿一下，恢复元气，这比交谈更能给他们带来慰藉？我不知该如何理解他们，只得迫使自己不要再盯着他们看。在我看来他们真是太异乎寻常了。

And they made me realize that the part of Christmas I most look forward to isn’t the perfume of the tree, the overflow of food or our exchange of presents. It’s our chatter, copious8) and constant.

他们让我明白，对于圣诞节，我最期待的不是圣诞树的芳香，不是丰盛的美味佳肴，也不是互相交换的礼物，而是海阔天空、滔滔不绝的闲聊。

I have friends with storytelling skills vastly superior to Mark’s. He tends toward malapropism9), using “dubious” as a compliment, and skips crucial details. But I’ve been listening to his inflections10) and cadences11) since they rose from the twin bed parallel to mine in our childhood home. None provide as powerful a reassurance that, for all that time alters or obliterates12), there are threads of continuity. Some things stick and some people stay.

我有些朋友讲故事的技巧不知要比马克强多少倍。他常常会犯一些可笑的用词错误，比如把“可疑”用作褒义词，还会漏掉一些关键的细节。但他这样的语音语调和抑扬变化，我从儿时在家跟他床挨床睡在一起时就一直在听。没有什么比这更能使人相信，尽管时光改变了无数的人和事，冲刷掉无数的记忆，但这世上有些东西是恒久不变的。有些事依然如旧，有些人依然如故。