1 . For years now, I’ve been wanting to sell our home, the place where my husband and I raised our kids. But to me, this house is ________ a building.

In the front room, there’s a ________ that has hundreds of pencil lines, ________ the progress of my children’s growth. Every growth stage is marked in grey, with each child’s name and the date they were ________.

Of all the objects and all the memories, it’s this one thing in a home that’s the hardest to ________. Friends I know have returned home after work only to discover their wall of heights has been freshly painted over. A new paint job wouldn’t normally be ________ by tears, but erasing that ________ of motherhood hurts more than it should. Our kids grow in so many ways, but the wall is the ________ proof of their progress, right there for everyone to see.

Over the years, I’ve talked about how much I would ________ abandoning that wall when I moved, ________ the last marks were made 10 years ago when my kids stopped growing. So one day, my children hired Jacquie Manning, a professional ________ whose work is about capturing the beautiful things in life. She came to our house while I was at work, and over several hours, took photos of the hundreds of drawings and lines, little grey fingerprints, and old marks. ________, she managed to photograph all those years of memories perfectly. Afterwards, she put all the photos together into one image, transforming them into a beautiful ________ of my family.

Three weeks later, my children’s wonderful gift ________ its way to me — a life-size photo of the pencil lines and fingerprints that ________ the entire lifetime of love and growth.

2 . When we first moved into my grandparents' old house，my wife declared it a hidden danger. We planned to burn it. But I thought it prudent（审慎的）to check out the house first ______ something of value had been ______.

I walked through the tall grass where the old house sat. I felt as though I had stepped into a time capsule. Here were the ______ of my grandparents' lives: a broken chair，some old clothes. . . But the thing that ______ my eye was a ______ stuffed with papers. I ______ through its contents and was instantly ______ back in time. Greeting cards from old friends and relatives，an uncle's third-grade spelling book，now all dead and gone. I spent most of a ______ hour going through that box.

So the old house was ______ the torch.

As we hurried through our lives，visits grew ______ Then，one morning，my father died from a heart attack. Why I ______ that old house on a day shortly after my father's funeral is still   ______ me. It was as though it were ______. As I stood there once again，my eye was drawn to a pile of papers on the floor. An envelope，______ with age，lay on top. My father had served in the navy during World War Ⅱ and had written home whenever he could. I removed one letter ______ from its envelope. I ______ the familiar scrawl（潦草的字迹）. Dad asked his mother to greet everyone and said that he ______ them all. Tears ______ in my eyes as I read those words he had so carefully emphasized:“All is well here. Please don't worry. I am doing fine. ”

As I left the old house that day，I took one last ______ back at it over my shoulder. I don't care what any one thinks，I ______. That old house gets to stay there until it rots（腐烂）into the earth.

3 . My 83-year-old mother came to live with me a year ago last November. She was very ill and I had to put my life on hold to _________ her.

Each morning, I got her up and _________ her and made her breakfast, and sat with her. I rushed for a bowl when she felt sick, and lit fires to keep her warm. I cooked and _________ her to take a few bites.

It’s a hard job caring for a sick or dying parent, whoever you are. But it was _________ hard for me, a doctor myself. I couldn’t help treating her in two different ways. The medical professional in me led me to examine her in _________ as if she were my patient. As a _________, I saw the woman who had given birth to me, wiped my nose, sent me to college and had been _________ presence in my life for over half a century.

Also, my mother didn’t _________ my hard work or understand that other people’s help could have _________ the burden.

None of the treatments her doctors gave her __________ , and finally her life became about comfort. When finally she accepted the painkillers, she accepted the fact that she would __________.

Illness and need took us across personal boundary I’d never before considered. We used to argue a lot, __________ during this time we shared stories and memories and we became __________.

When the __________ came, we accepted the fact that we looked at the world in different ways, but what __________ was that we loved each other.