【推荐2】I’d flown across the country to attend a special ceremony held for those new soldiers and their parents in Georgia. Over the weekend, my son and I spent our time together in Columbus, a small town there. Being a vegetarian, I’d prepared a list of cafes and restaurants that offered food without meat. We finally went to a cafe.

I’m an American, but my son looks Asian, because his father is Japanese. I noticed that, like Columbus itself, the cafe was filled with persons. The place was so cheerful.

After we’d finished eating, I went to the restroom and waited for the person ahead of me to come out. An older black customer dressed in a green suit and hat headed to the restroom and I quietly said to her, “Oh, someone is still in there.” She looked at me with a cheerful, sweet smile and said, “Thank you!”

Then she turned to my son dressed in his military (军事的) uniform, chatted with him a bit, and suddenly gave him a huge hug, telling him he was such a fine man, that he’d made a smart decision to choose a military career (职业), and that she was thankful for his service!

My son shyly thanked her, nodding and saying. “Thank you, ma’am” many times.

But with this sudden and short meeting, I was given a gift that I really needed. I’d been feeling very worried and lonely up until that point, as I was the only person there to support my son that weekend, but also being the one person worried about his choice. Yet here was a beautiful black mother encouraging him, in front of a quiet white woman hardly holding it all together.

Out of all the valuable moments in my life, this moment in the cafe was where love won over all!

【推荐1】Samiya was born in Australia on 18th August 1993, in a village near Sydney. When she was fifteen, she went to university and studied IT. Samiya didn’t grow up in a rich family, and the family lived in a small house. Samiya’s father worked as a taxi driver and her mother was a teacher. In her childhood, Samiya was shy, but her parents knew she was very intelligent. She was really good at maths and computer games. Samiya and her husband had some great ideas for apps (手机应用) and together they started a company. The company made apps for teaching children maths and English. Their apps made a lot of money and with the money, Samiya bought her parents a new house.

Lidia was born on 18th August 1993 in a large town in Poland. When she was fifteen, her family moved to Italy. One day she went to a park to play basketball. A man walked up to her and took pictures of her. Lidia thought “This is it, it’s my big moment!” She was tall for her age and very beautiful, but she was shy. And she loved sports and played basketball every day after school with a group of boys. She wanted to be an international basketball star. It was her big moment, but she didn’t become a basketball star; the man was a fashion photographer, and Lidia became a professional (专业的) model. With the money from her first year’s work, she bought her parents a new house.

【推荐3】Our youngest daughter can be stubborn(执拗的) about receiving gifts, and I told her so. She took it well.

“Where do you think I get it from?” she always asked me.

“I’m not stubborn when it comes to receiving gifts,” I said. “I used to be, but not now. I like all the gifts I get.”

She has a birthday coming up and we want to get her new boots, cowboy boots. All the females in our family have cowboy boots.

Cowboy boots aren’t cheap, but we want to do something special and get her something she could use and enjoy for years to come. But my daughter is pushing back, saying she’s happy with her present boots – which are old and worn-out(破烂不堪的).

I push back, she pushes back, and we are locked in(陷入) a mother-daughter match over stubbornness and how much is too much to spend on a special gift.

She thinks my husband and I do too much for her. I used to think the same thing about my parents – my parents weren’t rich, but they were generous（大方的）. They kept saying they enjoyed giving me gifts, but all I could think about was how much money they were wasting on me.

Years ago, I told a friend that I thought my mother overdid (做得过多) it when it came to buying gifts for her children.

My friend, closer to my mother’s age than mine, looked at me and said, “Who are you to tell your mother what she can do?”

I wanted to argue with her, but I didn’t. I didn’t fully understand it then, but I understand it now – now that I’m a grandmother myself.

The longer you live, the more you see how often things go wrong. Marriages fail, friendships break down, family members become estranged (疏远的), and accidents and illnesses cut lives short.

There is a brokenness (挫折；苦难) that fills many of our lives.

So, when you see life going well, families working hard and growing strong, you want to celebrate.

It took many years for me to understand that giving gifts is an expression of happiness as much as it is an expression of love. I understand giving gifts is a way to celebrate those moments when life goes well.

About five weeks ago, I noticed the skin of our pet lizard was growing dusty. It worried me. I reported the strange surface on the skin of the lizard to my husband and children the next morning. Seconds later, our lizard appeared from its tank with its old skin flowing behind it.

I didn’t think about it much until a morning last week when I knocked my favorite teapot off the table. It burst into hundreds of pieces. As I swept up the mess, I wondered why we had been breaking so many things over the months.

It started three months ago. It was my husband’s birthday. He had just lost his job. The uncertainty was starting to wear on us, so I wanted to do something special.

“Let’s make a cake for Dad!” I cried.

My kids screamed with joy. We were busy making the cake happily for most of the day. Candles on the cake! Balloons on the walls! Flowers on the table!

Two hours before my husband came back home from another job interview, my daughter climbed up to grab a glass from a high shelf. It fell and crashed beside the cake. Tiny pieces of glass were everywhere. She cried loudly as I threw the cake away. My husband had banana pudding for his birthday.

Three days ago, the light in our living room suddenly went out. After several hours of unsuccessful attempts to fix it, my husband suggested watching the Michael Jordan documentary series The Last Dance.

The sadness of Jordan’s retiring from his beloved basketball to play baseball and what had pushed him to make such a hard decision really surprised me. As I watched him take off his basketball uniform and replace it with a baseball uniform, I saw him leaving behind the layer that no longer served him, just as our lizard had. Neither of them chose the moment that had transformed them. But they had to live with who they were after everything was different. Just like us. I realized that we had to learn to leave the past behind.

Humans do not shed skin as easily as animals. The beginning of change is upsetting. The process is tiring. Damage changes us before we are ready. I see our lizard, raw and nearly new.

Jordan said that no matter how it ends, it starts with hope. With our soft, hopeful skin, that is where we begin.