1 . My Dad’s Jeep

When my father died, I got his car. Eight years later, it’s _________ . How am I supposed to say good-bye _________ ? “Why does our car look so dirty?” my 5-year-old daughter, Fianna, recently asked. “This car is super _________ .” I replied.

“Because it’s Grandpa Jack’s?” Fianna asked as we _________ out of the school parking lot. I smiled and nodded. It has kept him _________ ever since.

To Fianna, Grandpa Jack is a concept, not a(n) _________ person she knows. Fianna’s saying my father’s name reminds me of his current _________. It’s then — and all the times I _________ his warm hugs or the gent let one of his voice — that the car _________ me. It’s __________ on wheels that my father existed and that, for a period, he __________ my life with love.

One recent morning, I pulled up into our driveway after __________ Fianna off at school. Then I parked, played Ben King’s “Stand By Me” loudly over the old speakers, and stayed __________ .

I let every __________ of my dad that the song and the Jeep created sit with me in the car. I wish I __________ had to say good-bye to my father. At least I still have time to learn how to say good-bye to a car.

2 . One morning when I was seven years old, I woke up to find my mother was gone. I was terrified, running to_______her.

That morning, my father was coming to pick me up to spend a week with him and my stepmother. When he arrived, he_______an envelope on my mother's bed. It read, “Jeff, I’ve carried the_______for the last seven years. Now it’s your_______. I need a life of my own.”

After reading the letter, my father said, “Mom’s very_______and she’s gone on a vacation, so you’ll be_______with me and Melanie for a while, OK?”

I nodded, but I knew the_______——my mother had abandoned me. I was_______all the way to my dad’s house and entered my room without a word. I thought Melanie might be unhappy because of my_______. But I was________. Over the following months, Melanie tried her best to make me feel________and loved. ________I discovered that I loved Melanie a lot.

When I turned 18, my dad and Melanie gave me a car and wanted to throw me a party, but I just wasn’t in the mood(心情) for________. We were in the garage________my birthday present when a postman handed me an envelope. Inside it was a letter from my mother! It read, “My dearest Steve, you turn 18 and become a man today. I know you must be very________with me, but please________me. Six weeks before I left, I was diagnosed(诊断) with cancer. I’d suffered the________ of my mother at 10, and I knew how painful it was. I________that if I left you with your father and you believed I'd started a new life, it’d________you less. I’m writing this and leaving it with my lawyer, and it’ll be posted to you on your eighteenth birthday.”

Tears streamed down my cheeks. It was then that I realized her________was not abandonment but love.

3 . “We can spend the rest of our lives together making plans,” says the woman who now goes by Jeanne Watts (formerly Danas).

Jeanne and Stephen Watts first _________ and soon fell in love in 1971, when they were at Chicago ‘s Loyola University. But Jeanne ‘s mom strongly _________ the relationship because she didn’t want her White daughter seeing a Black man. Still, the pair _________ dated for seven years. But after Jeanne graduated from a nursing school and _________ a job that required a long commute (通勤) and late shifts, she faced difficulties seeing Stephen, who didn’t own a _________. Jeanne was completely overwhelmed by everything. The couple talked about _________, but Jeanne was afraid of taking that next step because the family issue was always _________ on her. Standing at the nurse’s station during her _________ one evening, Jeanne told him over the phone, “I love you, but I just can’t do this.”

Crushed by the news, Stephen was _________. They would spend the next four __________ leading separate lives and not speaking to each other.

Cut to 2021, when Jeanne was a divorced retiree whose mother was no longer __________. She began looking for Stephen from her home in Oregon, but she couldn’t __________ him on social media. Everything seemed to come to a(n) __________ end.

In April 2021, from his niece, Jeanne got to know that Stephen was in a nursing home. When she walked into the room, Stephen __________ her instantly, said her name and started to cry.

“You are my heart and soul,” Stephen told her. “I want to be with you always.”

A few months later, he asked her to marry him. “I gladly took his last __________,” says Jeanne Watts. The pair said “I do” on Oct. 15, 2022 in front of about 65Guests at the couple’s new home.

4 . My mother had a beautiful evening dress. Each time after wearing the dress, she always_________placed it in a box and hid it at the top of a wardrobe (衣柜). From time to time, it would be_________out of its box and shown to me, and as a small girl I would_________the day when I might be allowed to try it on. But that never_________

The wardrobe where the dress was_________happened to be in my bedroom. One day, I had a strong_________to try it on. I quickly pulled the dress over my head and then moved it slowly down. My mother’s waist must have been extremely_______as it fitted my waist with little room to spare.

Suddenly, I realized that my mother would be home_______, so I hurriedly undressed but I_________spilt a bottle of ink (墨水) over the dress. I was so__________that

I stuffed it into the box and pushed it back onto the wardrobe. I__________the fear throughout my teenage years that it would eventually be discovered with painful__________

Many years later, my mother grew old and became__________One day, I__________an afternoon tea with a group of her closest friends to keep her company. Somehow the__________turned to the dress and my mother said she could never understand how it got a terrible ink stain (污迹).

Suddenly, I found myself in front of my mother red-faced,__________washing over me. I was so__________that I forgot the outcome and finally told my mother the__________My mother forgave me as all the mothers do, and at last I was freed from that awful__________buried deep inside me from my childhood. Honesty gave me__________

5 . Like many people, public speaking once filled me with fear As a writer, I felt much more ________ expressing myself on the page, rather than on the ________. Strangely, I found that the feelings of ________ to be perfectly tolerable; ________, I was concerned with the ways that others would perceive my nervous energy. A slight change of ________, the unconscious biting of my lip — I assured that I’d be ________ for any nom-verbal signal that showed my lack of ________. I was experiencing anxiety about my anxiety—consequences that made the whole task feel much more ________.

You might have ________ this yourself before a job interview or important work meeting in front of senior colleagues. And the more you try to ________ your feelings, the more obvious they appear to others.

According to a striking new study, however, these concerns may be ________. Jamie Whitehouse, a research fellow at Nottingham Trent University in the UK, has shown that visible signs of stress are often ________, leaving others more likely to like us and treat us ________. If so, then we need not try so hard to ________ a calm-and-collected poker face, safe in the knowledge that people will relate well to our ________.

6 . I was an angry adolescent in my first years of college. One day I had a serious fight with my father.

I saw him as _________ and wanted to break free. We both exploded in shouts and I _________ out of the house. My mind raced with angry thoughts about him and I sighed all the way to school.

As I ran across the campus towards the classroom, I suddenly realized that I didn’t have the assignment that was _________: a thought card. Professor Simon had explained that every Tuesday we must _________ an index card, on which we wrote a thought, a concern, a question or anything that’s on our mind and that he would return the card every Wednesday with his _________ or answer on it. He stressed that the card was our _________ to class on Tuesdays.

Now, I raced down the hallway, ten minutes late to class. Just outside the door, I took out an index card and wrote on it “I am the son of an idiot!”, as I could only think about the _________ I’d just had with my dad. Then I dashed into the room, handed the card to Dr Simon and took my seat. The moment I reached my seat, I _________ telling him that about my dad. I didn’t want to _________ myself to him.

Wednesday morning I got to the class early and __________ in the back. Dr. Simon began returning our thought cards. On my card was written, “What does the ‘son of an idiot’ do with the rest of his life?” His question got right to the __________ of the issue: Whose problem was it? Whose responsibility was it?

Dr. Simon’s comment kept coming up in my mind over the next few weeks. Slowly, my thinking began to __________. People began to notice that I was taking __________ for my doings and choices. My grades improved. My relationship with my father also improved __________. Now I saw him as concerned and caring, instead of controlling. And it all __________ with a question, an innocent-seeming question.

7 . On Tuesday, I was having a hard day. I went to _________ in Philadelphia about 5 hours away from my hometown. Going to college so far away is really hard on me _________, especially when I get upset. I hadn’t seen my own family in months, so _________ something like that happening to my parents or sisters was a(n) _________ feeling. This sense of sadness _________ me and stayed with me for a couple of days. I felt more and more homesick the more I thought about the tragedy—it really made me _________ my family.

On top of this _________, was the stress of coming exams and homework assignments. On Tuesday, I just couldn’t shake my feeling of _________. I called my mom and she made me feel instantly better. She always seems to have the perfect _________ for me in any situation. “You can’t __________ your happiness in the hands of anyone or anything outside yourself, Amelia,” she told me. She was so __________ and so concerned. She sent me a few inspirational __________, and called 3 more times that day to check in on me.

It became evident to me later that day how amazing my mom’s __________ for me was. I just felt so __________ to have a person who cares for me so much. I __________ that no one else I meet in my life will ever love me so much.

8 . I was ten years old, standing on the stage. My hands were _________ and my heart was beating fast, and through the sea of faces in the audience, I was searching for the only one who _________ most to me. She knew that our _________ were today. She’d promised me she would be there.

“The life of an elephant and the life of a human,” I said, _________ audible(听得见的), “are not so different.” My fingers _________ the watercolor painting I’d done of an African elephant; I knew that my face was red and that everyone was _________ me because of it, which only made me blush(脸红) even more. Speaking in public had never been _________ for me, but today, having to present my animal research project to a _________ gym, was terrifying.

I swallowed hard. “Over the _________ of a lifetime, elephants both __________ and are affected by their environment. Elephants live in female-led groups. The matriarch-the oldest in the family-makes all the. __________.”

I glanced at my teacher, who gave me a smile of __________, and just then I saw a(n) __________ at the door of the gym. She came in.

“Elephants __________, not just with gestures but also with sounds too low for us to hear.”

Suddenly, my mind went blank. I could not __________ a single word. My __________ became the heartbeat of the world. I had __________ this presentation in the shower, while brushing my teeth, and while riding on the bus. As it turned out, there was something __________:forgetting the speech. Then my mother cleared her throat, and our eyes __________. Gradually, I started to remember everything.

In all the years since then, I have never forgotten a single __________ about elephants.

9 . One day, I experienced something that caused me to lose my temper, to the point that I was in tears. So frustrated was I that I reached out to a dear and ____ friend to ask for advice on how to let go of ___. And then, I went for a long walk.

As I walked, I ____ my anger and what may have caused it. I heard my friend’s voice saying “drop into the heart space”, a space that love booms and if we allow it, it will   ____ our hurts. It is my ____ that hate cannot grow where love ____. I allowed my mind to follow that love and to review what the ____ of my anger was. I realized my anger is the result of many emotions that are normal.

There is a ____ of being overwhelmed, frustrated, tired and there is sorrow ____ as well. And perhaps the sorrow is the biggest one. For example, it is not easy to ___ a parent’s falling weak even when I recognize that it is part of the cycle of life. I had not acknowledged my sorrow until a friend ____ that it was part of my anger, and she was correct. I am grateful for having friends I can reach out   for ____ and comfort.

I am now able to ____ my anger, to drop into the heart space, to send out love and light, and to let go of any frustration rather than to ____ my anger. I know it will get easier if I am ____ with myself and allow the healing that is needed to happen.

10 . When my mother told my father she was pregnant (怀孕的)，the first thing he did was buy a TV. It was 1957 and TVs were _______ technology back then. He thought that with a baby, they’d be going out a lot less and that he would need to find _______at home. That was the first _______ he gave me. But when I think of other gifts my father has given me, the first would be a love of _______ . He is not usually an observer of life, but he can be _______ and insightful (富有洞察力的)．He is always right in the middle of our study．He and my mother gave me a love of words and books. He has been totally deaf in one ear since he was two years old, so we _______ listened to music. In my childhood, storybooks were king-not songs.

The second is _______ all. Even when my sister and I were little, the conversation around the dinner table was _______ but adult-level. Your age didn’t matter. If you voiced an opinion, you had to _______ your case and give evidence. He ____________ everyone the same - child or adult, CEO or cleaner.

The greatest gift to his daughters was that he took interest in our ____________. Most successful women I know had fathers who ____________ their intelligence. My father said my mother was the wisest person he had ever met. They met at a dance in the early 50s, when she was a teacher. Wanting to ____________he told her about Jane Austen’s Emma, but misquoted (错误地引用) the book. My mother ____________ him and he was in love from that moment.

Over the years, my father taught me never to stand still and to ____________ for change. I continue to follow his lead.