1.
Thanks to my conservative(保守的) Jewish background, I didn’t believe in angels. That is, not until Christmas Eve of 1979, when an angel brought unexpected joy to my home.
After divorce, my two daughters not only lost the security of a whole family, they also tearfully left behind neighborhood friends, a familiar school, and a large house. These had all been replaced with a narrow two-bedroom apartment in a poorer part of town.
I arranged to take my vocation during my children’s winter school holiday. We spent evenings planning activities: cookie baking, games, a pizza night, and evening car rides to view neighborhood holiday lights. With expectation, they seemed to be in good spirits.
The week before the school break, however, terrible news of family disasters arrived. By Christmas Eve, gloom clouded our vacation plans. An afternoon outing for movie did little to improve our mood.
On returning to our apartment, we were astonished to see a beautiful, six-foot Christmas tree propped(支撑) against our front door. In silent wonder, we looked back and forth, from the tree to one another and around the empty street. Excitement built, and the girls begged to keep the tree.
“Maybe it’s for us,” insisted my older daughter.
“Yeah,” echoed my younger child. “I bet an angel brought it to us!”
I laughed aloud at the idea of an angel bringing a Christmas tree to a Jewish family. Caught up in their happiness, I pronounced the tree “ours.”
We dragged it inside and headed out to the only supermarket in our small town open that late on Christmas Eve. With holiday goods marked down to half price, I gave a nod of approval to a tree stand(底座), two boxes of multicolored balls, a package of six Santa figurines(小雕像), a 100-foot string of mini lights, and one paper angel.
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Back home, we moved “our” tree into our tiny living room.
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The annual winter holiday became a family tradition.
One possible version:
Back home, we moved “our” tree into our tiny living room. Cheerfully, the girls painted some paper decorations. With delight that had been absent for months, we started to add the things we bought from the supermarket around the Christmas tree. We strung the lights, hung the multicolored balls and placed the paper angel on top. Finally, with a girl in each of my arms, we sat in the darkness, attracted by the twinkling Christmas tree lights. There was full of joy in our new home.
The annual winter holiday became a family tradition. We’d feel complete with a “Jewish Ang
el” Christmas tree in member of our heaven-sent gift. For many years, we held our breath and experienced the familiar feeling up our arms when we placed the original paper angel on the top of each tree. Still, every Christmas Eve, my daughters and I talked about the unexpected joy that Christmas tree had brought us and about the special childhood memories at that time.
2.
阅读下面短文，根据所给情节进行续写，使之构成一个完整的故事。
It was a hot summer day. My dad and I were getting ready to go out for a ride on the boat. That’s when the phone call came, the call that made the bright, beautiful day a cold, dark, gloomy one.
die in your armsI had just put on my suit, shorts, and tank top, and packed my bag with sunscreen and everything else I would need for that day. I ran into my parents’ room to find dad. When I saw him on the phone, he was crying. I’d never seen my dad cry before. What possibly cou
ld have happened?
“Max, I’m so sorry,” I heard him say. That’s when it hit me. I knew that Suzie had died.
Max has been my dad’s best friend for years. Suzie, his daughter, had a rare disease that mainly affected her body. Her brain was OK. She knew what was going on; she knew that she had problems and was different than other kids. Once she told her dad that she wished she could die and be born in a different body. Yet although she couldn’t live a normal life, she was still happy.
When Suzie and I were little, we spent quite a bit of time together. As we grew up, we grew apart. She lived in New York, and I lived in Midwest. When Suzie was ten she had to live in hospital. I sent her a Beanie Baby and she sent one back to me. About eight months before she died, Max gave us her number at the hospital and we talked at least twice a week until the end. Suzie was always so excited to talk to us and wanted to know every detail about my life. She wanted to know everything I did and everything I ate. In a way, she lived through me.
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After we found about her death, we…
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Her funeral was very different from any funeral I’d ever been to.
One possible version:
After we found about her death, we made our plans to go to New York for the funeral. When she was alive, I had bought another Beanie Baby but never had the chance to send it to her, so I took it with me, hoping that I could put it in her casket. When I was on the plane, I just couldn’t help thinking about the time we had spent together.
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