 It was 7:30 a.m., and I was groggily pulling on a bathrobe when the doorbell rang. 当时是清晨七点半。一听到门铃响，我便迷迷糊糊裹上了一件浴袍。 'Who could that be?' I murmured to my husband. “那会是谁呢？”我向丈夫呢喃道。 'It's the painters,' he answered, darting downstairs to open the door. I soon heard him chatting with them in Spanish on the front porch. That's when I really woke up. “是油漆工”，他一边冲下楼去开门一边说。不久我就听见他和油漆工们在前面门廊用西班牙语交谈。那时，我才真正从梦乡中醒来。 'The painters? For our house?' I called down the stairs incredulously. Alejandro and I had been talking about painting the exterior of the house for over a month. We had looked at color charts, painted sample patches and narrowed down the choices. But we were still completing the plan. “油漆工？来刷我们的房子？”我冲楼下大喊，觉得难以置信。一个多月以来，亚历杭德罗(Alejandro)和我一直都在谈论房屋外观的刷漆问题。我们一起看了比色图表和刷好的样品，并缩小了选择范围。但我们仍在完善这个计划的过程中。 By the time he came back inside, I was furious. 等他回到房间时，我已是怒不可遏了。 'Why are painters already here? We don't know the accent colors! We haven't sketched it out! We didn't run it by my sister!' I complained. “为什么油漆工现在就来了？我们连主色调是什么都不知道！我们还没有把草图画出来！我们还没让我的姐姐过目呢！”我抱怨道。 'We'll get started and figure it all out as we go,' Alejandro said. 'It's time to make it happen.' “我们就要动工了，在这个过程中，我们会把所些问题都一一解决的。”亚历杭德罗说，“该是开工的时候了。” I was mad all day long: Painting our house is part of our investment in it and ought to be a mutual decision, I fumed. But that evening when I got home and took a look at the painters' progress, it was suddenly easy to figure out where the trim color should go and what color the door should be. I tried to defend my morning hysteria, saying we had not technically been ready to pull the trigger on the project, but my argument fell apart in light of how well it was working out. 我一整天都气鼓鼓的。刷房子是我们对房产投资的一部分，这应该是两个人共同的决定，我十分恼火。但那天晚上，当我回家看到油漆工的进展时，突然觉得不费吹灰之力便能说出门该上什么色、哪些地方该刷配色。但我还是试着为自己早上歇斯底里的行为辩解。我说，严格说来，我们并未准备好动工。但由于刷漆工程进展得异常顺利，我的此番争论因而完全站不住脚。 'Maybe you could even say…I was right?' he asked, teasingly, hopefully. “也许你甚至可以说……我是对的？”亚历杭德罗揶揄道。他对我的态度发生转变仍抱有希望。 I answered with a mock cry of horror, as though he had asked me to curse my children. I love the man, but really. What a suggestion. 我对他的话报以一阵恐怖的假哭干嚎，就好像他要我诅咒自己的孩子一样。但我爱这个男人，是真爱。让我承认他是对的，这是多好的一个建议。In a democratic system like our marriage, where two parties enjoy a 50-50 split in voting rights, it's uncomfortable when one party designates himself or herself the dictator and makes a decree. I've always prided myself on being part of a marriage of equals, where we are both the breadwinners and, as I like to tenderly remind the South American gentleman to whom I am wed, we are both responsible for the housework. We also both handle the banking, bill paying and investment decisions. 当身处我们的婚姻这样一种民主制度中时，双方在投票表决权上各占一半，如果其中有一方（他或她）自封为独裁者并作出一个裁定，这就会让另一个人不快。一直以来，我都为自己是这段平等婚姻中的一份子而感到自豪。我们两个人都在赚钱养家，同时我也喜欢温柔地提醒我丈夫──娶我的这位南美绅士──两个人都应该承担一些家务。而在银行事务、账单支付和投资决策方面，我们俩也是有商有量。 But as illustrated by the 'paint-gate' episode, sometimes it really doesn't work to wait around for consensus to take hold. Sometimes you need to designate a trigger man to execute the final decision. And sometimes─and this is where it gets complicated─we need to assign ourselves that role and simply take over. 但回到我刚刚提的“刷门”事件上，你会发现，有时候想要达成共识，光空等着根本就行不通。有时你需要指派一位“扣动扳机的男人”来作出最终的决定。还有一些时候──这种情况就很复杂了──我们需要自封为这个角色并坦然接受。 In retrospect, I realize I did this a few years ago after our kids were born and I felt strongly that we did not have enough life insurance. For Alejandro it was a nonissue: None of his Uruguayan friends or family have life insurance, which he considered a symptom of Yankee neurosis. Getting insurance for myself was easy enough, but it felt awkward to demand that Alejandro take out a policy on himself. Combine that with the fact that when I can't sleep, I watch those true-crime TV shows that are inevitably about one spouse who knocked off the other for the insurance money. 回忆往事，我发觉自己在几年前就曾这样做过。那是在我们的孩子出生后，我强烈地感到一家人的人寿保险缴得不够多。而对亚历杭德罗来说，这根本就不是个问题：他在乌拉圭的家人朋友统统都没有人寿保险，所以在他看来，这完全是美国佬的神经质症状。要我为自己买一份保险是小事一桩，但如果要求亚历杭德罗也这么做会让我觉得尴尬为难。还有，那就是我在睡不着的时候会看一些根据真人真事拍的犯罪电视节目，那里面必然会上演这样的剧情：夫妻中的一方为了吞掉配偶的保险金而出手干掉对方。 However, it was my absolute certainty that life insurance was essential that motivated him. Now we both have policies, and we both feel better for having them. 尽管如此，我还是百分百确定，人寿保险对他来说必不可少且至关重要。正是这种坚定，促使我让他上了保险。现在我们俩都投了保，这也让我们感觉更好。 One party having that total confidence that this is the right thing to do is, I believe, the first requirement for decree-making. It relates to the second requirement, which is a willingness to take responsibility for the consequences. It's not always possible to completely mitigate the impact after the fact, but it's important to let your spouse know you understand it will be your job to clean up any mess. 我认为，作出独裁决定的首要前提就是：一方须完全确信自己要做的事是对的。而这又与第二个前提息息相关，那就是愿意为一切后果承担责任。虽然事后不可能完全消除所有的影响，但有一点很重要，就是要让你的伴侣知道，你非常清楚残局要归你来收拾。 I got an opportunity last week to exercise some of my new theories on decree-making when we needed to clear out space in our garage, which we are converting to a guesthouse. I suggested selling our unneeded stuff on Craigslist. 上周，就在我们需要清空车库、准备将其变成一间客房的时候，我得到了一个能将我自创的“独裁决定新理论”付诸实践的机会。我建议将家里用不上的东西放到在线分类网站Craigslist上出售。 Alejandro was negative about Craigslist, arguing that he didn't want strangers stopping by the house and that the payoff would be too small for the work of posting ads and fielding calls. At first, I let the items sit while we mentioned them to friends, hoping we might somehow luck into a taker. 而亚历杭德罗却一口否决了在Craigslist上卖旧物的想法，他争辩说不想让陌生人到家里来，而且跟刊登广告和接答电话的工作付出相比，卖东西的所得太少了。一开始，我依了他，就将物品闲置在家里，但向朋友们宣传了旧物出售的消息，希望就这样靠运气，没准儿会寻来买家。 Finally, I decided this was silly: I knew selling them on Craigslist was the right thing to do, and I was willing to do the work of vetting calls and receiving customers. A week later, our garage was empty and we were a few hundred dollars richer. Alejandro can hardly remember why he didn't like the Craigslist idea and is happy to have been overruled. 但最终，我觉得这种方式太愚蠢了：我知道把它们放在Craigslist上出售才是正确的事情，我也愿意去做筛选来电和接待买家的工作。一周以后，车库就被清空了，我们的手头也多出了几百美金。现在，亚历杭德罗很难想起自己当初为什么不喜欢在Craigslist上卖东西的主意，他也乐于接受自身建议被否决的事实。 And, oddly enough, that's how I feel about the house paint and some other decisions that my beloved temporary dictator has unilaterally imposed. 说来也怪，在刷房子和其他一些由我心爱的临时独裁者单方面敲定的事情上，我也颇有同感。 I may even work my way up to saying 'you were right.' But first let's see how the house looks when the paint dries. 也许，我会争取说一声“你是对的。”但在这之前，先让我们等油漆干了，瞧瞧房子的模样再说吧。 | |
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