[Junior High Reader 3] - Super Reading - Tiered Reading Weekly Plan

Author: Huang Qiong, Luo Xiaojun, Yan Jingqun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-07-01
Features: The sweet dew that nourishes the heart, love is a gentle breeze that makes the ancient lotus bloom anew; love is the precious spring rain that nourishes the winter wheat and the buds of peaches and apricots; love is the harmonizer of life, bringing happiness and fulfillment to our lives, letting our smiles appear on our faces and be etched in our hearts; love is the traditional virtue of our nation, enabling the heroes and knights without a penny to sing with swords and roam the world, allowing the down-and-out to feel the warmth of humanity; love is the elixir that brings life back from the brink, guiding those in out of darkness and back into the sunny, smiling, and warm world. This world may not have palaces, chariots, or modern conveniences like TVs, refrigerators, or computers, but it cannot do without love and warmth. We sincerely pray and deeply call upon the world to let the flower of love bloom forever, warming the earth!
She said I was an angel
Once, I felt as though everyone was taking advantage of me. I felt that everyone I had been kind to had crossed boundaries, so even when I helped others, I didn’t feel happy at all—I felt as though I were just going through the motions. Moreover, two conflicting thoughts warred in my mind: one was, I wasn’t sure whether I did good deeds because I knew it was the right thing to do or whether I truly enjoyed helping others. The other was, if I did good deeds but didn’t feel happy about them, did they still have meaning?
In our neighborhood, several poor children lived with their grandmother. To help them, I had already spent a lot of time and money, but it only increased their grandmother’s dependence on me, as if I were the one responsible for those children, not her. This made me furious.
As Christmas approached, one day, I received a call from her. She made a request that I found extremely unreasonable: she said a girl had no gifts for Christmas and asked if I could buy her something. I had to admit that it took great courage for her, a younger generation, to call me and ask for help for someone I didn’t even know. I couldn’t ignore it.
“Have I done enough for her children? Now she wants me to help others as if I were very wealthy,” I grumbled in my heart.
A few days later, while shopping in a mall, I saw a gift box containing two dolls—one with black hair and the other with light yellow hair. I remembered the girl with no gifts and bought the box, but I didn’t feel happy about it. As I muttered to myself, I tossed it into my shopping cart.
When I got home, I wrapped it in gift paper and gave it to the grandmother before Christmas. After that, I never heard anything more about it. I suspected that the girl never received it, or that the grandmother claimed she had given it to her. My suspicion wasn’t unfounded.
When I was a child, I wasn’t allowed to see my grandmother, so she could only give me the Christmas gifts she had bought for me to my grandmother-in-law, who would then pass them on to us. However, my grandmother-in-law always replaced the labels and told us she had bought them for us. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I accidentally discovered that the dolls I had loved as a child were actually gifts from my grandmother, not my grandmother-in-law.
But well, I thought, let it be. I wasn’t in the mood to.
About a year and a half later, one day, I took my dog for a walk and saw a girl around seven years old playing in a yard. When she saw my dog, she shouted, “I’ve seen that dog before!” I told her I lived at the corner of the street, and sometimes I took my dog for walks past here. She came over, bent down, and patted my dog. Suddenly, I thought that she might know the children in the neighborhood. They had told me more than once that they had a friend named Joan who lived in our area. I asked the girl if her name was Joan.
“No, that’s my grandmother’s name,” she replied. Hearing her answer, my heart stirred slightly. I asked if she knew Aaron, Nick, and Melanie, and she said she did. I began to wonder if she was the girl I had bought the dolls for, the one I didn’t know. So I asked her, “Did you get a gift box with a pair of dolls last Christmas?”
“Oh, yes. The light yellow one is named Ruth, and the black one is named Debbie. They’re sleeping in the house right now,” she replied.
“Was that your only gift that year?” I asked.
“I think I got other gifts, but I don’t remember them,” she said.
“Who gave you those dolls?” I asked.
“Aaron’s grandmother,” she replied.
Ah-ha! Just as I suspected. The grandmother had taken all the credit for herself. To confirm my suspicion, I asked further, “Did she say where the gifts came from?”
The girl proudly replied, “She said an angel gave them to me.”
Suddenly, I felt a lump in my throat—Excerpted from the December 2005 issue of Little Beauty Writings