Every year on my birthday, a white gardenia(栀子花)was 1 to my house.But no card or note came with it.Calls to the flower shop were always 2 -it was a cash purchase.After a while I stopped trying to discover the sender's identity and just 3 in the beauty and heady perfume of that one magical, perfect white flower lying in soft pink paper.
But I never stopped 4 who the giver might be.My mother 5 to these imaginations.She asked me if there was someone for whom I had done a special kindness who might be showing 6 .I had more fun imagining that it might be a boy I fell in love with or one who had 7 me even though I didn't know him.
One month before my high-school graduation, my father died.My feelings 8 from sorrow to fear and 9 :my dad was missing some of the most important events in my life.I became completely 10 in my coming graduation, the senior-class play and the ball.But my mother would not hear of my losing any of those things.Mother and I had gone shopping and found an impressive dress, but it was the 11 size.When my father died, I forgot about the dress.
The day before my ball, I found that dress-in the right size-hanging over the living room sofa.It was 12 to me so lovingly.I didn't 13 if I had a new dress or not.But my mother did.She wanted her children to feel 14 , filled with a sense that there was a beauty even in the face of 15 .
My mother died ten days after I was married.The following year the gardenia stopped coming.