It was a painful time for me. At 42, I was slowly coming to terms with the idea that I might never be able to have a child due to my health condition. Up until that point, I never really gave much thought to being a mother and suddenly I could think of little else. My husband and I had been together for ten years before we decided to get married because neither of us was in a hurry to do so.
Motherhood just wasn’t part of the plan. As my 40th birthday approached, I began, for the first time, to notice babies and their happy, smiling mothers wherever I went. The voice inside me cried out, “It’s too late! You missed your chance to be a mother! You wanted an all-consuming career, and now you’ve got one.”
One day I headed to a café. An elegantly dressed, slightly older woman was seated a few stools (凳子) away at the half-empty counter.
“Would you like to see a picture of my daughter?” she asked me.
“Sure,” I said. She handed me a photo of a smiling Chinese girl. The child was about seven years old and was wearing a Snow White costume.
“That’s Melanie. She’s in the first grade,” she said, introducing herself as Jill. I could hear the motherly pride in her voice.
“She’s pretty,” I said.
“I love her costume.”
“What made you decide to adopt her?” I asked.
“I didn’t want work to be my whole life,” she said.
I’m not sure if she saw the tears welling up in my eyes as I replied, “I don’t either, but I’m afraid it’s too late.”
“I was 51 when I adopted Melanie,” she said with more than a hint of reassurance in her voice. “And it’s the most rewarding, exciting thing I’ve ever done.”
注意：1.续写词数应为150左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
A few days later, I told my husband that I wanted to look into adopting a girl from China.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
We recently reconnected on Facebook with Jill.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A Chair for My Mother
My mother works as a waitress in the Blue Tile Diner. After school sometimes I go to meet her there. Then her boss Josephine gives me a job too. When I finish, Josephine says, “Good work, honey,” and pays me. And every time, I put half of my money into the jar (罐子).
It takes a long time to fill a jar this big. Every day when my mother comes home from work, I take down the jar. My mama empties all her change from tips for me to count. Then we push all of the coins into the jar.
Sometimes my mama is laughing when she comes home from work. Sometimes she’s so tired she falls asleep while I count the money. Some days she has lots of tips. Some days she has only a few. Then she looks worried. But each evening every single shiny coin goes into the jar.
We sit in the kitchen to count the tips. Usually Grandma sits with us too. Often she has money in her old wallet for us. Whenever she gets a good bargain (划算的交易) on tomatoes or bananas or something she buys, she puts by the savings and they go into the jar.
When we can’t get a single other coin into the jar, we are going to take out all the money and go and buy a chair. Yes, a chair. A wonderful, beautiful, fat, soft armchair for Mama and Grandma. When Mama comes home, her feet hurt. “There’s no good place for me to rest my feet,” she says. When Grandma wants to sit back and cut up potatoes, she has to get as comfortable as she can on a hard kitchen chair.
So that is how come Mama brought home the biggest jar she could find and all the coins started to go into the jar.
Paragraph 1:
Now the jar is too heavy for me to lift down.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Paragraph 2:
Finally we find the chair we are all dreaming of.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
