2 . My 7-year-old daughter Leeny always has her nose in a book. She even _________ reading in the car on the long drive to summer camp, which was where she _________ the book. My family has always been overeducated, but we were _________ I didn’t own books. I borrowed books. However, when Leeny realized she had lost the book, she _________. “Sorry. I can’t find it,” she said. “It’s only $20, right? What’s the big deal?”

I felt the need to make her feel _________ for the book. She agreed to help me clean the chicken coop (笼子) _________ my paying the library fine. I thought this idea was very clever because cleaning the coop is some work I had been _________ for months. It was summertime and dust floated in the air. But my girl thought shoveling chicken poop (铲鸡粪) was the most _________ she’d had on a Saturday morning. In fact, she looked as if she might lose another _________ in order to clean the coop again. I stood, somewhat __________, watching her.

It took me a while to realize why my punishment had __________. The fact is that I was there, too, shoveling chicken poop, fetching the clean straw and feed. Leeny’s little sister, Vicki, was watching a cartoon while my husband paid bills. Only Leeny and I were __________. She had me all to herself for the first time __________ Vicki was born, and she was enjoying all the attention for once. I don’t know what she learned about responsibility, but I didn’t __________ the book any more. We __________ over that unpleasant job and spent quality time together: mother, daughter, and chicken poop.

3 . I had lived in the United States for 30 years or so. I couldn’t fully ________ how the concept of “the pursuit of happiness” fit into a super busy life. It was not until I started to grow plants on the balcony of my house on a quiet street in Boston that I had a(n) ________.

Gardening does not come ________ to me. I was not ________ to it as a child. I grew up in a city. My fellow people didn’t seem to ________ the absence of green. They lived in apartments and grew flowers in concrete courtyards, or on balconies to satisfy their gardening needs. No one grew herbs or vegetables. Why ________? Fresh produce was a plentiful bargain in daily markets nearby. Garlic(葱), ginger(姜) were ________ as a sign of thanks with the ________ of meat.

The first spring after I moved into my Boston ________, I grew my own food. I developed a deeper appreciation for the ________ of plants. There were ________ along the way: pests; sometimes too much heat; other times not adequate sun. For several seasons, I had tomato troubles. I’d find half-eaten fruit left behind. I made a habit, night after night, of moving plants indoors, so I would be the one to ________, not some creature with four paws.

In the ________ of home­grown food-seeding, growing, tending, harvesting, cooking—I came to understand a ________ version of happiness. It can be a matter of the heart’s achieving small steps of satisfaction, resulting from “neither wealth nor greatness” in Thomas Jefferson’s words. “but ________ and occupation(消遣).”

6 . A terrible thing happened to me while I was watching TV recently: I realized that I had aged. Now of course l know that I am aging, it’s just that I hadn’t realized quite how old I was until I saw a participant who I recognized on a reality TV show. Well, I didn’t recognize her but I recognized her name. I’d slightly known her in my 20s when she’d been the celebrity who had stolen my roommates’ boyfriends.

However, here’s the thing that shocked me-I hadn’t recognized her because rather than the beauty I remembered, on my TV was a middle-aged mum cooking. And then it hit me: that’s what I look like too.

It’s a particularly cruel change of nature that we can’t see ourselves as others do. We see our own face so often that the wrinkles that start to cut through it just go unnoticed. Occasionally we might get a rude awakening when suddenly our bodies stop working as expected but, for the most part, we’re left to get on with growing old without too many reminders. But when you get a reminder...oof! Since that show aired, I have sat in front of the mirror analyzing my face and wondering how I came to look so like my mother without noticing. I’ve also realized that my waist no longer fits into baby fat but a middle-aged spread.

I also fear that I don’t know what middle age looks like for my generation. Did my mother still feel 24 when in reality she was 15 years older? And why do I not feel like I’m where I should be as I approach 40? I definitely remember writing a list of things I will have achieved by the time I’m 40 at 19. Where is the house in the South of France or the Porsche 911 I so desperately wanted?

Since then, I’ve started to redefine myself. I don’t want to put everything down to age but I can’t quite stop myself. Tired again? Must be my age. Thank God then for social media. All around me I see amazing women at the other end of their 40s. They’ve accepted their age and seem to love it, so I’m hopeful that as I move into the next decade that will be me too. And maybe I’ll get the Porsche before I’m 50.

7 . The new radio programme from Self-help expert Glennon Doyle unexpectedly disturbed me. In a session of We Can Do Hard Things, she focuses on boundaries and their importance to our mental happiness. I heartily agree with her, because saying a polite but firm “no” is one of the basics for a happy life. I was, however, interested when she raised the idea that perhaps, as well as learning when to confirm our boundaries, we also need to stretch them. When does a boundary become a cage that locks us away?

Isn’t it always the case that just as you think you’ve got an area of life nailed; somebody comes along to show you that that’s not the case? As I listened, I started to see boundaries that might cause more problems than they were solving.

There was the work boundary that said that unless a project fell exactly into my topics, I wouldn’t take it-which meant that I turned down work that was otherwise interesting and rewarding.

There was the boundary that said I wasn’t to buy anything until I’d reached my savings goal-which resulted in me having to restart my laptop 20 times a day.

And then there was a boundary around relationships that set out exactly how I should be treated and what I wanted in them. Helpful to some extent, it blocked me from allowing someone to express their love for me, even if it wasn’t quite what I had predicted.

Had I been doing boundaries wrong all the time? Did I need to figure them all out again? I’ve spent the past few weeks looking at the boundaries I’ve secretly put in place, and I’ve let myself lower some that have been my protection over the years. Then I’ve come to the conclusion that, when it comes to boundaries, I’m a beginner again, and that’s fine. In fact, being back at the beginning is a blessing because it means there are still lessons to be learned and adventures to be had and that is something for which I can only be grateful.

8 . It was a summer vacation, and I was at a zoo with my family. Because of my extremely pointy nose, when we ________ a group of flamingos (火烈鸟) standing around a pond, my brother shouted at me, “ Hey, look! Your real ________!” Then they asked me to stand in front of my new-found relatives. “Now turn your face to the ________, sweetie,” my mother shot a picture.

When I was 14, the performer Ashlee Simpson got a________ nose job. I looked at her before-and-after pictures, and I was ________ to get one for myself. I told this to my mom but she disapproved. When I________ her to take me to see a plastic surgeon, she would say, “If you believe you’re beautiful, people will see you that way.”

She must have had enough of me, ________ she finally agreed to book me an appointment. Full of ________, I walked into the doctor’s office. He turned my head up and down while a nurse took a photo of my face. The doctor played around with my nose’s appearance with the computer. ________, he showed me his finished work. I had seen that nose on so many other people and I ________ the person looking back at me on that screen. I made excuses to get out of making another appointment and excited the office, never ________ a nose job again.

Looking at the old photo, I'm smiling with________. Had I had that plastic surgery, I would definitely lose my ________ and uniqueness. My mom’s words consistently serve as a ________ that don’t let appearance cast a shadow on our confidence and we should learn to ________ and love who we are.

9 . Our house was across the street from a hospital. We rented the upstairs rooms to outpatients at the clinic. One summer evening as I was preparing supper, there was a knock at the door. I opened it to see a truly awful looking man hardly taller than my eight-year-old daughter.

But the frightening thing was his swollen face. He told me that he’d been hunting for a room since noon but no one seemed to have a room. For a moment I hesitated, but his next words convinced me: “I could sleep on the porch (门廊). My bus leaves early in the morning.”

I went inside and finished getting supper. When we were ready, I asked him to join us. “No, thank you. I have plenty.” And he held up a brown paper bag. When I had finished the dishes, I went out to talk with him for a few minutes.

He told me he fished for a living to support his daughter, who was hopelessly disabled, and her five children. He didn’t tell it by way of complaint; in fact, he was grateful that no pain accompanied his disease. He thanked life for giving him the strength to keep going.

At bedtime, we put a small camp bed in the children’s room for him. When I got up in the morning, the bed linens were neatly folded and the little man was out on the porch. He refused breakfast, but just before he left, he smiled, “Your children made me feel at home. Grownups are bothered by my face, but children don’t seem to mind.” I told him he was welcome to come again.

In the years he came to stay overnight with us there was never a time that he did not bring us fish or vegetables. Other times we received packages. Knowing that he must walk three miles to mail these, and knowing how little money he had made the gifts more precious. I know our family always will be grateful to have known him; from him we learned what it was to accept the bad without complaint and the good with gratitude.

10 . On Nov.18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to give a concert.

If you have ever been to a Perlman concert, you know that getting on stage is no ________ achievement for him. He was stricken with polio as a child, and so he walks ________ two crutches. The audience sits quietly while he ________ his way across the stage to his chair and begins his play.

But this time, something went wrong. Just as he finished the first few bars, one of the strings on his violin broke. We thought that he would have to stop the concert. But he didn’t. ________, he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then ________ the conductor to begin again.

The orchestra began and he played with such ________ and such power and such purity as they had never heard before. Of course, anyone knows that it is ________ to play a harmonious work with just three strings. I know that, and you know that, but that night Itzhak Perlman ________ to know that.

When he finished, there was an awesome ________ in the room. And then people rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of applause from ________ corner of the auditorium. He smiled, wiped the sweat from his brow and then he said in a quiet and ________ tone—You know, sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can still make ________ what you have left. This powerful ________ has stayed in my mind ever since I heard it. And who knows?

Perhaps that is the ________ of life — not just for artists but for all of us, our task in this shaky, fast-changing, bewildering world ________ we live is to make music, at first with all that we have, and then, when that is no longer possible, to make music with what we have left.