今天是母亲节，放一篇十几年前写的旧文。当年龙应台的《目送》出版没多久，我还是刚刚二十出头的年纪。

这些文字现在看起来时代感满满，那个时候“校内网”还没改名叫“人人网”，Google还没被墙，大模型还没有问世，连深度学习都还没火，IT从业人员还在看C++ Template。

那个时候的我也是太年轻了，还没有完全意识到我的妈妈有多么不同。她不是那种会在下雨天带伞来接你，天气变冷的时候要你穿秋裤，打电话叮嘱你按时吃饭的妈妈。有些时候她甚至比我还要粗心大意。不过她有她自己可爱的一面：她会走着走着路，忽然跳起刚学的舞步，少女感十足。最珍贵的是，她给了我无限的信任。尤其是在重大的人生抉择关口，我都确信我妈是我的百分百拥护者。

十几年过去了，我自己也成了一名母亲。我时常在自己身上看到我妈妈的影子。我对孩子们的照顾粗心大意，时常把掉在桌子上的食物渣渣拿起来继续塞进娃嘴巴里，或者夜里空调开得太猛把娃冻得拉肚子。不知道我的孩子们长大之后会怎么看我呢？

我慢慢地、

慢慢地了解到，

所谓父女母子一场，

只不过意味着，

你和他的缘分就是今生今世

不断地在目送他的背影渐行渐远。

你站在小路的这一端，

看着他逐渐消失在小路转弯的地方，

而且，

他用背影默默告诉你：

不必追。

龙应台《目送》

我没有读书的习惯，几乎从不主动去读书。

小时候的各种故事书都是睡觉前妈妈读给我听的，一直到小学毕业。我很懒，从小就是。

看到周围的软件男学术男从C++template到各种paper读得津津有味畅快淋漓时候自己很是惭愧，那样的感觉我也是有过的，大二赶在期末前当我畅读完那本薄薄的模电教材后惊奇的发现原来我一学期来一直都没有搞清楚学的是什么，也顿时觉悟书本里有google不出来的系统化…只是没有压力的环境里我是断然不会去看书的。

看校内上师弟转的《目送》，是我能读得下去的文字，很多道理知道却不一定理解理解也不一定能做到，关于目送关于背影，我总对四五年前的自己很追悔莫及。

龙应台坐着父亲的廉价小货车去学校报到的时候，朱自清抱着父亲买来的橘子北上的时候，应该跟我现在差不多大吧，我不知道自己是否已经成熟明了，当三十年之后再回忆起来，会不会也嘲笑现在的自己“太聪明了”。

不知道是不是有很多人，遇到困难时候，脑海自然浮现“天将降大任于斯人”便精神重新抖擞。而小时候听到的那么多年的童话和寓言，是我心底里最初的美好，在并不那么流畅的成长过程中给我最源头的力量，让我成为现在的我。

感谢老妈。

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AI-generated translation.

Today is Mother’s Day. I’m posting an old piece I wrote more than ten years ago — when Lung Ying-tai’s Watching You Go had just come out, and I was barely in my twenties.

These words now feel of a different era: back then “校内网” had not yet rebranded to “Renren,” Google hadn’t been blocked, large language models hadn’t appeared, deep learning wasn’t yet hot, and the IT crowd was still reading C++ Templates .

I was so young at the time that I hadn’t fully realized how unusual my mum was. She isn’t the kind of mum who brings an umbrella to pick you up in the rain, or tells you to wear long johns when the weather turns, or calls to remind you to eat on time. There are moments when she’s even more scatterbrained than I am. But she has her own kind of charm: walking down the street, she’ll suddenly bust out a dance move she’s just learned, full of girlishness. The most precious thing is the unlimited trust she has always given me. Especially at the big crossroads in my life, I was always certain my mum was 100% in my corner.

More than a decade later, I’m a mother myself now. I keep seeing my mum in me. I’m careless with the kids — I’ll pick crumbs off the table and pop them back into the baby’s mouth; at night I’ll crank the AC too cold and give the kid a runny tummy. I wonder how my children will see me when they grow up.

Slowly,

slowly I came to understand,

that the bond between father, mother, daughter, son —

only means

that the fate you share with him is, in this life,

to keep watching his back move farther and farther away.

You stand at one end of the little road,

watching him disappear gradually where the road bends.

And,

with his back, he silently tells you:

Don’t follow.

— Lung Ying-tai, Watching You Go

I don’t have a reading habit; I almost never reach for a book on my own.

When I was small, all the various storybooks were read to me by my mum at bedtime, right up until I finished primary school. I’m lazy. Always have been.

Watching the engineer-types and academic-types around me devour everything from C++ Templates to research papers, eyes shining — that’s a feeling I have known, too. The semester I was studying analog electronics, racing through the slim textbook right before finals, I was astonished to realize I had no idea, all term, what I had been studying — and I felt, suddenly, that there’s a kind of systematic understanding in books that you can’t simply Google. But in an environment without pressure, I am absolutely not going to pick up a book.

Reading the excerpt of Watching You Go that a younger student posted on the campus network — those were words I could actually keep reading. Plenty of truths I “know” without understanding, “understand” without acting on. About watching backs disappear, I have always felt deeply regretful toward the me of four or five years ago.

When Lung Ying-tai rode her father’s cheap little truck to school for enrolment, when Zhu Ziqing held the oranges his father had bought for him on the way north — they were probably about my age now. I don’t know if I’m grown up and clear-eyed yet either. Thirty years from now, when I look back, will I also mock today’s self for being “too clever”?

I wonder if many people, when life gets hard, have the line “Heaven is about to lay a great responsibility on this person” surface naturally in their minds and pull themselves back together. The years of fairy tales and fables I heard as a child were my earliest, deepest sense of beautiful. They were the original source of strength on a not-always-smooth path to growing up, and made me who I am.

Thanks, Mum.

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