【推荐1】Sidewalks in Chicago were packed during the rush hour. I marched along as quickly as I could. If I didn’t get to the station fast I would miss the early train out of the city. That meant even less time to spend at home with my baby.

On my left was Saint Peter’s Church. I’d passed it on the way to the station many times, but today I stopped. Other commuters (使用月票乘车者) rushed around me. I knew I should follow them since my train wouldn’t wait. But I had the strangest compulsion to go into the church instead. I hesitated for a moment, but the feeling was strong. I went inside.

I sat down in a comer. It seemed like ages since I’d sat down to think. Mary Ellen had been born in October, on the very date of her due date, in fact, October 16. A month before my husband, Rick, had lost his job. I often worked as a designer, but I’d planned on taking time off after the baby was born. With Rick out of work, I didn’t have the choice. One of us had to find a job fast. I was lucky to find the job I had now. Unfortunately, it wasn’t one I could work on at home. Every day I had to take the train into Chicago, a two-hour commute in both directions. I left the house so early and came home so late, so I felt like I barely got to see my baby.

I was grateful that Rick was at home caring for her, but it was not her mother. Every minute away from her I felt like I was abandoning her.

Looking around at the windows, I remembered when Rick and I bad first decided to try for a baby. My friend Renee was almost as excited as I was when I told her about it.

“I’ve got something for you,” she said one afternoon when I her for lunch. She pulled a medal out of her purse.

“Fix this to your clothes every day,” she said. “You’ll have a baby in no time.”

Not long after I learned I was pregnant, I was thrilled at first. But little by little I started to worry: Was my baby okay? What if something happened? The doctor assured me things were going smoothly. My family gave me support. Rick tried to encourage me. I even continued to wear my medal. But no matter what anyone said, I couldn’t shake off my worries.

Now that Mary Ellen was born I had new worries about motherhood. Is this how life was going to be from now on, with every stage of my child’s life bringing new fears and anxieties?

I thought of Renee and her gift of the medal, feeling hopeful. On my way to the door I stopped at the gift counter. I’d missed the early train, so there was time to look around. I went over to a box full of angel cards, thinking of Renee. So many things could happen in the future as Mary Ellen grew up, went to school and went out on her own. So many things to worry about. It would take an army of angels to cover them all.

I saw a familiar face in the box. It almost felt like I was looking at a friend, someone who cared about my baby as much as her father and I did: On the back of the card was a date. “October sixteenth?” I said, not believing my eyes.

“That’s the angel’s birthday,” the woman at the counter told me. I nearly burst out laughing right there. Mary Ellen’s birthday! Maybe I couldn’t be with Mary Ellen every minute. But never again would I worry that she was out of the angers protection, or doubt that she had a special friend.

When I went off to college in the fall of 1991, I was an 18-year-old man whose favorite letters were the ones on the sports sweater. Four years later, I was crazy about the letters of the poet Keats, but one author’s penned letters stood out above the rest. You see, my father wrote me one letter per week from the time I left home.

In an age before email, these letters seemed too ordinary. But they arrived. Each week. One after another. Again and again. In snowstorms. On holidays. From foreign countries. They detailed what Dad referred to as “the week that was”—a day-by-day description of my father’s life.

In 1995, I graduated from college, like many 22-year olds, with plenty of uncertainty. Some of my questions were pretty typical: What was I going to do? Where was I going to live? When was I going to apply for graduate school? But one question was more vital than any other thing. What would happen to the weekly letters? Would they continue? To my surprise, the letters kept coming, more heartfelt and emotional than before and always on time. I mean the guy never missed.

As much as I enjoyed my father’s weekly letters, I didn’t fully appreciate them all those years when they arrived like clockwork. And I never fully understood why my dad would always ask if I’d received the letter when we spoke.

But now, as I pen my first official letters to my own sons Jackson and Cassius, it all seems clear. Although our boys have yet to leave for college, I have to accept that day will soon come. Just the idea of their leaving from our home makes me ache with sadness only a parent can know.

I am writing about “the week that was” with my daily details. With a box of over 500 of Dad’s letters nearby and his pen in hand, I write a letter, fighting back the tears I make it to the end and sign it just as he did. All my love, Dad.

Singapore is a small, flat, marshy island that has been developed to become the most important port and business center in Southeast Asia and one of the ten wealthiest countries in the world in terms of gross national product per capita.

Singapore has a population of 3.5 million people and a high density of more than 500 people per square kilometer. The superior infrastructure—especially the excellent port and international airport—has made Singapore the import and transshipment center for the region.     1     These functions are complemented by a large variety of maritime service activities, including banking, insurance, communications, and consulting.

Singapore has diversified its service sector to include a wider range of financial, communications, and management activities and has attracted the regional headquarters of many multinational corporations.     2     This diversification, as well as high consumption levels in the domestic market, allowed Singapore to cope with the 1983 oil crisis and 1997 Asian financial crisis somewhat more easily than did other countries in the region.

Singapore has a population of diverse ethnicity and religion, but it is dominated (77 percent) by overseas Chinese, descendants of immigrants who moved to Singapore in the colonial period and followed the religions of Buddhism and Taoism. Other groups include Malays (about 15 percent) and Indians (about 7 percent, mainly Hindu).     3     The promotion is especially among the highly educated in order to reduce labor shortages and ensure a workforce to support the older population. Colonial Singapore was residentially segregated, with the British living next to the government buildings on the east shore of the Singapore River, Chinatown on the west riverbank, and Indian and Malay neighborhoods farther toward the east.

The government has made serious attempts to foster harmony between ethnic groups and to create a sense of national identity by designating four official languages (Mandarin Chinese, English, Malay, and Indian Tamil).     4     They also enforce Singapore’s image of a clean and crime-free environment through very strict rules against litter and graffiti, media censorship, and licensing of satellite dishes and street entertainers.