“A nursing home would be safer, Dad,” Arlyn told her father, Jim.

“No way,” Jim interrupted. His wife passed away just a year before. At 91, he still wanted to remain in the cottage he and his wife had built.

Jim started experiencing an early sign of Alzheimer’s disease. Arlyn found his decline was indeed all-consuming. However, she herself was in her late sixties; her house was a 40-minute drive from the cottage. One day, when she read about a new eldercare service called Care. coach, it fueled her interest. For about $200 a month, a computerized avatar (头像) (controlled remotely by a human caregiver) would watch over a home-bound person 24 hours a day. She signed up immediately.

A week later, a tablet arrived. Following the instructions, Arlyn uploaded dozens of family pictures. Then an animated dog appeared on the screen. She presented the tablet to Jim, pointing to the screen pet, and said excitedly, “Here Dad. You have a new companion.” Jim, doubtful about the dog’s service, knew he had to learn how to get along with the dog before Alzheimer’s took hold.

Within a week, Jim and his dog, whom he named Pony, settled into a routine. Every 15 minutes or so, Pony would look for Jim calling his name if he was out of view. Sometimes Jim would “pet” to awake the sleeping Pony on screen. Pony reminded Jim which caretaker would be visiting to do the tasks: preparing meals, driving him to a senior center, etc. Pony would read poetry aloud or discuss the news. When Pony praised Jim’s sweater, Jim repaid by petting Pony’s screen with his finger sending hearts floating up from the dog’s head. One evening when Arlyn came to visit her father as usual, she was amazed to find that Pony was holding up a photo of her late mum to her dad between its paws.

Jim stared at the photo fondly, with tears welling up in his eyes.

Seeing the close bond between Pony and her dad, Arlyn felt a relief.

3 . Your relationship with your mom is supposed to be one of the most special relationships in your life, which makes it much harder when she says something that hurts your feelings.     1     Don’t worry. Here are expert recommendations for talking with your mom and taking care of yourself.

Stay calm. Breathe deeply to control your emotions. It’s completely normal to feel your temper rise if she said something really mean. However, don’t immediately react or argue. Take slow, deep breaths to calm yourself.     2    

Tell your mom that she hurt your feelings. Express yourself so your mom knows that you’ re hurt. It can be scary to approach your mom and discuss what she said, but it’s a big step.     3     In this way she’s more likely to listen to you. Make sure you tell her why you’ re upset and what you’d like to see change.

    4     Take care of your mental well being by stopping harmful negative talk. If your mom says hurtful things, you might start to believe them unless you change your outlook. If you think something like, “I must be a bad person,” stop and tell yourself, “Actually, I’m quite a good person.” Repeat these positive thoughts and eventually, you’ll believe them.

Spend time around emotionally-supportive people. Take a break from the stress and anxiety that comes from interacting with your mom.     5     Talk to them about your situation and you may get help from them. Knowing you are around people who love you for who you are can make you feel much better.

4 . If there is one trait (特点) I have taken from my mother, it is her _________. Like most mothers, my mom wants the best for me. She encourages me to seize every opportunity and use it to its fullest _________. She has encouraged me to _________ those opportunities that may even seem impossible. After all, she does this every day.

When friends met my mom for the first time, they were often taken aback, and _________ they didn’t want this emotion to show on their faces when they shook her hand and said hello. When they got me alone for a second, they _________ me for not telling them my mom was in a wheelchair. It shocked them.

In my _________, I never think to mention that my mom is in a wheelchair. She has been paralyzed from the waist down for most of her life. To me, though, she is just a/an _________ mom. Like many of my friends’ moms, she has always been there for me. When there were those _________ as a child when I just needed to be held, I knew I could crawl onto my mother’s lap and find _________ in her safe arms. When I needed a __________ on the sideline of my soccer games, she was always there. Mother, friend, teacher, nutritionist, chef, caregiver, banker, and advisor---my mom has always been __________ for me.

On family vacations, my mother never sits out on a/an __________. She couldn’t hike the volcano in Hawaii with the rest of the family or go cliff-jumping in Mexico. But she always __________. She goes as far as she can.

I have learned from watching my mom that if I don’t have the courage to try, even if the chances of failure are slim, I will never __________. The opportunities I have are without bounds because my mother showed me how to live __________ limits.

It was now December twenty-fourth. So here we were, travelling about 2,000 miles and finally reaching our destination San Diego at last. We’d rented a room in a small, well-worn motel (汽车旅馆) near the beach.

Six-year-old Chat frowned. “There is no Christmas tree, Mommy! But it’s almost Christmas. How can Santa know where to put our presents without a Christmas tree?”

“Yes, a Christmas tree!” echoed (附和) his four-year-old brother Jay. “I want a Christmas tree!”

”Couldn’t we just get a small Christmas tree and set it up in this room somewhere?“ asked Chat. ”That way, Santa Claus will know where to put our presents.”

I sighed, looking around at our squeezed-in beds and bags. “But, honey, the five of us can barely move around in here with all our suitcases and everything. I’m sorry, but we just don’t have the room for something extra like a Christmas tree.”

Our oldest son, seven-year-old Robin, had been listening quietly. Suddenly, he grinned (咧嘴笑). “Yes, we do.”

I stared. “Where?”

He pointed to our motel room’s door. “Right there—on the back of that door. Please, Mommy, if we can’t get a real tree, can’t we make a pretend tree and put it up there? Then Santa will know we love Christmas just as much as he does.”

“And leave us some presents, too!” Chat added.

Make a tree? I looked at the newspaper that I had bought when I was searching for places to rent. If I taped some of those pages together, cut them out into a tree shape, and bought some poster paint and brushes at the store next door…

Now, I was grinning, too. “Okay, boys! Ready to make the very best Christmas tree in the whole wide world?”

“Yes!”

So we bought some paint and then taped and cut and painted.

The next morning, I heard, “Mommy! Daddy! Look! Santa did find us after all!”