5 . Eight months after my father died, I saw some letters on top of my mother’s coffee table. They were tied with a silk ribbon and addressed to her decades ago in my father’s neat handwriting. I couldn’t imagine my serious father ever writing anything like love letters.
“Would you like me to read them to you?” Mom asked with a hint of a smile.
The letters were written in 1974 over the course of a month when my father traveled to Italy to care for his beloved, sick mother, leaving his wife and me, their newborn daughter, behind in Toronto, the city my parents called home after immigrating to Canada from Italy in 1956.
Growing up, my father was my hero and protector, but he was also a man of few words, part of a generation of immigrant men who worked hard for a better life.
I sat back while my mother read his letters to me, and thought, “Who is this guy?” My father used endearing terms I had never heard him say. He referred to my mother as “my dearesr” and “my companion” who was always in his thoughts. In each letter, he enclosed a Canadian one-dollar bill for me and declared, “You and your mother are my life.”
As children, we assume we know everything about our parents. But, sometimes, we find out that they were and are people with various facets.
My father was proud and stubborn, and he married a woman who was his equal in that regard. During their 58-year marriage, their stubbornness often led to conflict. So it was bittersweet to hear my father’s youthful sentiments read aloud by my elderly mother with a wistful (留恋的) tone. I knew she was thinking about what could have been and what had been once upon a time. After she finished reading the letters, I held them in my hands and examined them like they were fossils. Although a man I knew as economical with his thoughts, he had filled the front and back of several pages.
These letters are only part of their correspondence. My mother wrote back to my father. One day she will read those letters to me, she’s assured me. And just as with my father, they might help me discover another dimension of a parent I never knew before.
1. What kind of person did the author think her father was?
| A．Optimistic. | B．Reserved. | C．Sensitive. | D．Romantic. |
2. What can we know about the author’s family?
| A．Her mother was the family’s provider. |
| B．She didn’t get on well with her father. |
| C．Her parents were emigrants to Italy. |
| D．Her parents shared similar personalities. |
3. What does the underlined word “facets” in paragraph 6 most probably mean?
| A．Interests. | B．Ideas. | C．Sides. | D．Possibilities. |
4. How did the author feel when she heard the words in the letters?
| A．Surprised. | B．Awkward. | C．Thrilled. | D．Heartbroken. |
5. What did the author find out about her father through the letters?
| A．He was good at hiding his feelings. |
| B．He regretted not being with his family. |
| C．He was a loving husband and father. |
| D．He was stubborn from the inside out. |
