The weather is getting warmer and warmer for April in NJ. Dad, mum and I were nursing a cup of tea on our side table and watching the field outside. There was barely any breeze, and the humidity is so thick that you could almost roll it in your palms.By the time we finished our second cup, the sky had turned black. Lightening danced acrossed the horrizon, accompanied with heavy rainstorms. It promised the raniy sseason would come earlier than before. Only a few of seconds, after drops of the first drops rain had driven us inside, the phone rang, when mum picked up receiver, her face became the only bright spot in that gloomy day.It was my bro, an army driver. Half a year ago, he was conscribed and begun three-year assignment in an isolated town of North China.Bro made a vadiant effort to sound cheerful, but dad knew better from the tone of his voice. As a man who spent on rural town North town during the Culture Revolution, dad recognized the sympotoms of acute homesickness.Gradually, the curative powers of conversation made us all feel better, until a booming claps of thunder shook the windows only inches from the phone.“What was that?” bro asked.“It sounded like an explosion.”“Just thunder” mum said, “It ‘s been raining here all week”.There were a few seconds of silence.“Yanner” mum asked,“Are you there?”“I was thinking about what mumsaid- just thunder and rain. Other than all of you.” “do you know what I miss most of all?the sound of thunder and rain.we have wind, snow but it never rains . The unbrella I brought haven’t played a role.” “Remember, mum, when I was a boy?”He continued,“Bro and I often stretch out on the floor and listen to the sound of thunder and rain”.“I remember”, I said to him.“I wish I were there now to listen to with you”, he said softly.As soon as I hung up the phone, I got my tape recorder, large unbrella and a wooden chair.“I am going to record brother some sound.”I told mum.With lightening flicking across the sky like a fireworks display, I sat in the rain beneath my unbrella, and record half an hour of the finest NJRain sound a lonesome man could ever want to hear. The next day I mailed the tape to bro with a single line,“A special gift”.While bro was in north during the last years, I founded my family looking forward to the rain season. Rather than feeling depressed on gloomy days, we come to regard the rain as special.Each drop seemed to tie us closer to a relative so far from home.Afterwards, the gift has become a tradition for us. It lets know that no matter where in the world we may be, we are linked together as a family.
************* A will to perfect, no action to take.************
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