勇敢面对　Let’s Face It

A smile is an inexpensive way to change your looks.

～Charles Gordy

“What a crabby-looking lady，”the cashier at my local convenience store whispered to her coworker. I was tromping through the toilet paper aisle grabbing products off the shelf like it was Y2K all over again.I had a half dozen kids waiting for me in the van, and here's the thing：they were all my own children.No time for polite.No casual conversation with the checkout lady, no nod of approval toward the stock boy, no breathing.Just get the toilet paper, two gallons of milk and some Frosted Flakes and get back out in the trenches！

But I was intrigued by the crabby-looking lady. Which one was she?Hoisting a family pack of toilet paper under my arm, I scanned the tiny store for the crabby lady.Let's see, there's a middle-aged guy in Aisle Three stocking up on pork rinds, an older gentleman at the checkout purchasing an egg salad sandwich and a coffee, and……just then I saw her, the crabby-looking lady.

Her eyes were small slits；her brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail so tight it looked like her forehead would snap off. Her mouth was a severe gash between pinched cheeks.A deep furrow cut the lady's brows.Crabby wasn't the word.This lady looked like she had either smelled something really bad or was about to single-handedly euthanize her own cat.Couldn't tell which.Then, I turned away from my own reflection in the convex security mirror at the back of the store.The crabby looking lady……was me！

That night, after I ran the troops through bath, brush and bed routine, I plopped on my bed and sobbed. I was the crabby-looking lady！Me！The girl voted nicest smile by her high school class.I had become a cross between Morticia from The Addams Family and a lemon！Right then and there I resolved to do one thing over the next year.One simple resolution：to smile.I didn't need to wait for January 1st-I would start right now.Simple, right?Sure, if you're a televan-gelist.Or naturally nice.Or just had a lobotomy.But I'm a mom.And moms have stuff to accomplish.People depend on us to be crabby！How else do bedrooms get picked up?

I mean, a smile is perfectly appropriate for those“Oh, sweetie, thanks for picking a handful of dandelions for mommy and saying you wuv wuv wuv me”days. But what about the days when the teenagers broke curfew and the dog puked Oreos on the bathroom floor and Dad is late from work again and the baby is doing that colicky thing?On days like that I'm just supposed to（twitch, twitch）smile?

Well, unless I wanted to end up looking like a shrunken head, all I could do was try. Of course I didn't tell anyone about my smile resolution.I mean, it was going to be hard enough to smile without my kids making comments like，“Mom, is there something wrong with your face?”I would just go smiley on my own terms.At least ten times a day, I would make a conscious effort to smile.And it wouldn't count if I did it ten times in a row.It had to be……incremental.

The first day of“Mission Smile”I smiled at（and this is in order）：a strange dog who peed on my daughter's new school shoes（while she was inthem），the mailman, three of my six children（I couldn't muster more than a smirk for the teenagers just yet），a librarian who asked me if I was aware of the global overpopulation problem, and my bathtub. I smiled at my husband over the phone when he called to say he'd be late from work（it wasn't really much of a smile, more like a facial spasm）.And I smiled at myself in the mirror twice, just to remind myself what a smile looked like.（Mouth curved upwards, twinkle in eyes, good……now think happy thoughts.）

After the first week of smiling practice, I discovered that if I forgot to smile all morning, I could make up for it by watching I Love Lucy reruns after the kids went to bed. I thought of it as extra credit smiling homework.

After a month, though, a weird thing happened. I didn't even try to find things to smile at and I'd still notice this funny sensation take over my face.It was like Pavlov's dogs to a bell：I'd see my kids run in from playing“throw mud at the sibling with the lowest IQ”and Ding！Smile.When my teenage daughter loaded the dishwasher with her soccer shin pads and cleats……Ding！Smile.Even when we were really late for church and fangs began to protrude from my upper jaw and venom dripped from my incisors and I hissed，“Hurry little children, it's time to partake in the precious body and blood of Christ！”Ding！Smile.It was actually kind of unsettling, this smile thing.Like I could actually be happy in the midst of chaos！

The final blow came, though, after nine months or so of my resolution. I was meeting a couple of friends for our regular date at a local coffee shop.Bursting though the coffee shop door in my usual haphazard manner, I overheard the cashier behind the coffee counter remark to a co-worker，“There's that happy looking lady again.”

And I didn't even have to look around the coffee shop to know who she was talking about. I could see my own reflection in the cash register on the counter.The forty-year-old voted best smile……by me.

～Cristy Trandahl

微笑是物美价廉的美容化妆品。

——查尔斯·戈迪

“那个女的看起来跟个怨妇似的。”我家附近便利店里的收银员跟同事窃窃私语道。我急匆匆地奔向卫生纸货架，拿下几卷卫生纸就要走，这速度不亚于千年虫危机1爆发之时的抢购。有六个孩子在店外的面包车上等我，要紧的是，这六个孩子都是我的孩子。没时间考虑礼貌不礼貌了。我顾不上跟收银员寒暄，也来不及冲理货的小伙子微笑示意，甚至连气都有点喘不上来了。我只有一个念头：买完手纸、两加仑牛奶和早餐麦片就赶紧回去。

听到收银员这话，我突然对他们说的那个看起来跟怨妇似的人产生了兴趣。他们说的是谁呢？我把给全家人买的大堆手纸夹在胳膊下，环视小店四周，想看看他们所说的怨妇。只见三号走廊里有个中年男子，他在打包肉皮；收银台那边有一个老人在买鸡蛋沙拉三明治和咖啡；终于……我看到他们所说的怨妇了。

那个人眼睛小小的。褐色的头发扎成马尾辫，结结实实地束在脑后，所以额头都被绷得紧紧的。她面色潮红，嘴巴严厉地抿起，前额有一道深深的抬头纹。用怒气冲冲形容这位女士一点都不过分。她看起来好像嗅到了什么极其难闻的气味，或者像是要亲自给家里的猫咪执行安乐死似的。反正看起来就跟这两种情况差不多。我不再盯着商店后面的安全凸透镜。原来，他们说的怨妇……就是我。

那天晚上，我按部就班地给这堆孩子洗漱完，把他们送上床。忙完之后，我扑到床上，抽泣起来。他们竟然说我像个怨妇！我像怨妇？要知道，上高中那会儿我们班推选最靓丽笑容时，我可是独占鳌头。可是现在，我却变成了令人讨厌的管家婆。就在那一刻，我决定用一年的时间来改变自己。我下了一个简单的决心：微笑。不能等到新年再下决心，说做就做。很容易，对吗？如果你需要抛头露面在电视上传播福音，或者你天生爱笑，抑或患有神经冲动，整天笑呵呵对你来说或许不是问题。但我是一个有孩子的人，所以有很多事情要忙。做母亲的只能这样，像怨妇一样忙碌，很多人都指望着我们呢。我们要不这样的话，连卧室都没人收拾。

我要说的是，对于那些“啊，小宝贝儿，谢谢你给妈妈摘了一把蒲公英，说你爱……爱……爱妈咪”的日子而言，微笑自然随意。但是，当孩子长成大孩子，天天晚上不按时回家的时候；当家里的狗狗总在浴室地板上乱吐饼干的时候；当孩子他爸老是很晚回家，孩子闹腾得没完没了的时候呢？笑？只怕到时候脸抽筋还来不及呢！

话说回来，我真不想让自己变成黄脸婆，能做的就是尽力尝试改变。当然，我并没有把自己的微笑方案告诉任何人。我是说，笑对我来说本身就不是件容易事。要是孩子看到我笑的时候再问上一句：“妈妈，你的脸怎么啦？”我就更笑不出来了。怎么笑？这得我自己说了算。一天最少得笑上十次。我会刻意要求自己去微笑。一口气笑十下是不管用的。笑……得一点一点来。

我执行“微笑任务”的第一天，微笑的对象依次是：一条陌生的狗，它在我女儿的新鞋上撒尿（鞋子当时就穿在女儿脚上）；邮递员；还有我的三个孩子（现在，我对大孩子只能勉强假笑一下）；还有一个图书管理员，他傻乎乎地问我，有没有发现全球人口过多的问题；我还冲浴缸笑了笑。那天，老公打电话说晚上要晚点回来，我在电话里冲老公笑了笑（与其说是笑了笑，还不如说是脸抽搐了一下）。最后，我还冲镜子里的自己笑了两下，这只是想提醒自己该怎么笑（嘴角上翘，眨着眼睛，好的……现在想点开心的事情）。

一周的笑容训练后，我发现了一件事情。上午忘记笑也没事，等晚上把孩子都送上床之后，自己看会儿重播的情景喜剧《我爱露西》，就能把那天欠下的笑补回来。我把看这部喜剧当成每天的加分作业。

一个月后，奇迹发生了。我不再刻意去笑了，但总是把微笑挂在脸上。这就好像巴甫洛夫做的小狗对铃铛的条件反射实验似的：我看到孩子追逐打闹，傻乎乎地拿着泥巴往姐妹身上乱扔——叮当！笑。我看到十几岁的女儿把足球护膝板和球鞋扔到洗碗机里洗的时候——叮当！笑。有一次我们去教堂迟到很久了，我模仿毒蛇的样子，从上腭龇出毒牙，毒汁沿着门牙往外流，我学着毒蛇嘶嘶的声音说：“孩子们，快！我们得赶去品尝一下耶稣的血和肉了。”——叮当！笑。笑这个东西真是让人捉摸不透，我一下子觉得自己可以在乱中作乐了！

我执行微笑计划差不多九个月后，值得夸耀的事情发生了。我照常和几个朋友在附近的咖啡馆聚会。那天，我和平日一样，很随意地冲进咖啡馆。走过柜台的时候，我无意间听到柜台后面的收银员说：“瞧，那位春风满面的女士又来了。”

我根本不用朝四周看就知道她说的是谁。柜台上的收款机映着我的身影。我已经40岁了，但觉得自己的笑容依旧最灿烂。

——克里斯蒂·迪伦达尔