My kids sit in Gee’ s living room and respectfully lift antique Christmas ornaments (装饰品) out of a well-loved cardboard box. Gee tells me that she and Tom built their Christmas ornament collection piece by piece. She smiles as we leave with the box. Gee stands beside them, quietly explaining each treasure. Her precious heirlooms (传家宝), gathered over a lifetime, have found a new home.
We first met Tom and Gee in the early days of our marriage. Someone had been returning our garbage cans to the garage each garbage day, and Jim and I had wondered who. Then one day we spotted him: an elderly man who lived across the street.
I baked cookies and left them on a stool outside the garage with a thank-you note. When we got home from work that day, a typed letter had replaced the gift. The letter was from Tom and explained how he had come to walk the neighborhood on garbage day, returning cans for people he barely knew. Back when he’d been fighting a war I wasn’t alive to see, his young wife, Gee, had found herself living alone. Neighbors had taken the time to handle her garbage cans so she didn’t have to, and he never forgot. Now he paid it forward by doing the same for all of us.
A few years after we’d moved in, Tom died. We photocopied that letter and attached it to one of our own for Gee. We told her how thankful we were to have known him. She wrote back and told us she still talked to Tom every day. When Gee invited us over to look through Christmas omaments, I realized how hard it must be to part with that box, a piece of Tom.
It’s not just Gee and Tom. It’s the man who lets our kids pick peaches off the tree in his front yard. It’s the ladies who call Jim when their pool filter breaks and leave their overflowing basket for our kids on Easter. It’s the corrections officer directly across from us, who smiles and waves and makes me feel a little safer when Jim is a way.
This Christmas, we’ll decorate our tree with Gee’s ornaments, out of the box that is labeled in Tom’s handwriting. Maybe I’ll talk to him just as Gee still does. Thank you, I’ll say. For teaching us what it means to be a neighbor.
4. Why is the cardboard box a treasure for Gee?
A.Because it was lost in the war | B.Because it is filled with antiques |
C.Because it is full of memories of Tom. | D.Because it is beautifully decorated |
5. What happened when Tom was fighting in a war?
A.His wife could not live alone. |
B.His neighbors helped his wife a lot. |
C.The author wrote to him from time to time. |
D.He paid his neighbors to take out the garbage. |
6. What do the ladies do in Paragraph 5?
A.They pick peaches for the author’s kids. |
B.They often smile and wave to the author. |
C.They help Gee decorate the Christmas tree. |
D.They give the basket to the author’s kids on Easter. |
7. What can be the suitable title for the text?
A.A Nice Couple | B.A Garbage Man |
C.The Gift of a Great Neighbor | D.The Best Christmas We have |