I sit at my kitchen table, while my daughter, Anna, sits next to my mother. On the wall hangs a photo of my father.
“When is Rick going to be here?” My mother asks, referring to my husband. 
“I don’t know, Mom,” I answer patiently. “He’ll be here for dinner.”
I sigh and get up from the table. This is at least the tenth time she has asked that question. 
While my mother and daughter play, I busy myself making a salad. 
“Don't put in any onions,” Mom says. “You know how Daddy hates onion.”
“Yes, Mom,” I answer. 
I scrub(洗擦) off a carrot and chop it into bite-size pieces.
“Don't put any onions in the salad,” she reminds me. “You know how Daddy hates onion.”
This time I can’t answer. 
My mother had been beautiful. She still is. In fact, my mother is still everything she has
been, just a bit forgetful.
I cut off the end of the cucumber and rub it to take away the bitterness. Cut and rub. This
is a trick I have learned from my mother, along with a trillion other things: cooking, sewing, 
dating, laughing, thinking. I learned how to grow up. 
And I learned that when my mother was around, I never had to be afraid. 
So why am I afraid now? 
I study my mother's hands. Her nails are no longer a bright red, but painted a light pink.
Almost no color at all. And as I stare at them, I realize I am feeling them as they shaped my 
youth. Hands that packed a thousand lunches and wiped a million tears off my cheeks. 
Now my hands have grown into those of my mother's. Hands that have cooked uneaten 
meals, held my own daughter's frightened fingers on the first day of school and dried tears 
off her face. 
I grow lighthearted. I can feel my mother kiss me goodnight, check to see if the window is
locked, then blow another kiss from the doorway. Then I am my mother, blowing that same
kiss to Anna. 
Outside everything is still. Shadows fall among the trees, shaped like pieces of a puzzle.
Someday my daughter will be standing in my place, and I will rest where my mother now sits. 
Will I remember then how it felt to be both mother and daughter? Will I ask the same
question too many times? 
I walk over and sit down between my mother and her granddaughter. 
“Where is Rick?” my mother asks, resting her hand on the table next to mine. And in that
instant I know she remembers. She may repeat herself a little too much. But she remembers. 
“He’ll be here,” I answer with a smile. 
【小题1】What’s wrong with the writer’s mother?

单词拼写
【小题1】Senior people should go to hospital to have themselves e______ once a year.
【小题2】Many unusual things have been found in the ________(胃) of some sharks(鲨鱼).
【小题3】What do you mean by l_______ a candle in the daytime?
【小题4】To tell the truth, I feel _______(荣幸) by your trust.
【小题5】Most people of my father’s ________(一代) have experienced the hardship of wars.
【小题6】I r________ her without difficulty, because she was as beautiful as ten years ago.
【小题7】As the plane was about to take off, we all f______ our seat belts.
【小题8】The sports meet was so _______ (成功的) that we were praised by the leaders.
【小题9】It is _______(极其) hot outside . I have never experienced such a hot summer in my life.
【小题10】The _______(鼓舞人心的) story of the scientists moved many students . They decided to study hard.

When I was about 12, I had an enemy, a girl who liked to point out my shortcomings. Week by week her list grew: I was very thin, I wasn’t a good student, I talked too much, I was too proud, and so on. I tried to hear all this as long as I could. At last, I became very angry. I ran to my father with tears in my eyes.
He listened to me quietly, then he asked. “Are the things she says true or not? Janet, didn’t you ever wonder what you’re really like ? Well, you now have that girl’s opinion. Go and make a list of everything she said and mark the points that are true. Pay no attention to the other things she said.”
I did as he told me. To my great surprise, I discovered that about half the things were true. Some of them I couldn’t change (like being very thin), but a good number I could—and suddenly I wanted to change. For the first time I go to fairly clear picture of myself.
I brought the list back to Daddy. He refused to take it.“That’s just for you,” he said.“You know better than anyone else the truth about yourself. But you have to learn to listen, not just close your ears in anger and feeling hurt. When something said about you is true, you’ll find it will be of help to you. Our world is full of people who think they know your duty. Don’t shut your ears. Listen to them all, but hear the truth and do what you know is the right thing to do.”
Daddy’s advice has returned to me at many important moments. In my life, I’ve never had a better piece of advice.
【小题1】What did the father do after he had heard his daughter’s complaint?

It was shortly before midnight, and Dr Patricia was getting ready for bed. The phone rang on the end of the line was a woman about to break a promise.
The woman was her mother’s neighbor. Flora Harris had made the neighbor swear she wouldn’t tell her daughter she’d had a heart attack and was in the hospital, for fear her daughter would worry. The neighbor wisely decided to disobey orders.
Harris desperately wanted to get to the hospital immediately, but she couldn’t. She lives in Washington, D. C, and her mother lives in California.
For the past year a half, Harris has gone to Los Angeles every other month to take care of her mother. Flora Harris takes care of her husband, James, who’s 91 and has Alzheimer’s disease. They live in their own home, and a caregiver comes to help them a few hours a day.
Harris is one of many Americans facing the heartache of how to take care of aging parents from afar. She’s often worried, not to mention exrtemely busy with a demanding job, two teenage daughters and the frequent trips to California.
In some ways, Harris is lucky. She has the resources to make the trips to Los Angeles. Plus, Harris is a doctor who treats the elderly.
“But it’s still tough,” she says. “I can foresee what the next few years are going to look like, and it’s not a pretty picture. My father’s going to need diapers (尿布). There will come a time when he won’t recognize me and he’s easily excited. I worry he’s going to be violent and hurt my mother.”
So what do you do when you live a continent away from your aging, sick parents? There are no magic answers. You can hire someone to help, but you can’t oursource it completely.
【小题1】Why was the woman thought to have broken a promise?

Watching some children trying to catch butterflies one hot August afternoon, I was reminded of an incident in my own childhood．When I was a boy of 12 in South Carolina, something happened to me that cured me forever of wanting to put any wild creature in a cage.
We lived on the edge of a wood, and every evening at dusk the mockingbirds would come and rest in the trees and sing. There isn’t a musical instrument made by man that can produce a more beautiful sound than the song of the mockingbird.
I decided that I would catch a young bird and keep it in a cage and in that way would have my own private musician.
I finally succeeded in catching one and put it in a cage. At first, in its fright at being captured, the bird fluttered about the cage, but eventually it settled down in its new home. I felt very pleased with myself and looked forward to some beautiful singing from my tiny musician.
I had left the cage out on our back porch, and on the second day of the bird’s captivity my new pet’s mother flew to the cage with food in her mouth. The baby bird ate everything she brought to it. I was pleased to see this. Certainly the mother knew better than I how to feed her baby.
The following morning when I went to see how my captive was doing, I discovered it on the floor of the cage, dead. I was shocked! What had happened! I had taken excellent care of my little bird, or so I thought.
Arthur Wayne, the famous ornithologist, happened to be visiting my father at the time, hearing me crying over the death of my bird, explained what had occurred. “A mother mockingbird, finding her young in a cage, will sometimes bring it poison berries. She thinks it better for her young to die than to live in captivity.”
Never since then have I caught any living creature and put it in a cage. All living creatures have a right to live free.
【小题1】Why did the writer catch a mockingbird when he was a boy of 12?