My family is still recovering from the hard time of the past few years. It began when my teenaged son became _______.

As anyone who has ever _______ a seriously sick child knows, the stress doesn’t go away. Every day the air carried the _______ of an approaching storm. My husband and I seemed to forget how to _______ — we couldn’t have a simple conversation without fighting and tears.

One night, my son and I were discussing Valentine’s gifts. I _______ that his dad gave me a kazoo (卡祖笛) for our first Valentine’s Day.

My first _______ to this gift was confusion, which quickly turned to _______ when I, a professional saxophone (萨克斯风) player, couldn’t get it to make a _______. The kazoo eventually was _______ away and I hadn’t thought of it __________ that evening. Interested, he asked to see it. After some trouble, I found it __________ in a dusty box.

“You couldn’t make a sound?” he asked, amazed, turning it __________ in his hands. “What’s so hard about it?”

“I don’t know. It just never __________.”

My husband grabbed (抓住) the kazoo — “It’s __________! Look, you just do this …” — and blew. __________ happened. Surprised, he tried again, only to produce a sound like an angry bee.

We burst into laughter as if the long-settled dark cloud had __________ and let in a ray of sunshine. Eyes met and souls __________. My son took a turn on the kazoo. He did no better than us. More __________.The mood stayed light for the rest of the evening.

Even though we have gone through a lot, __________, we can still connect as a family. There is always light to lead the way out of the __________.

When we pay attention, we see courage every day. I see it in my classroom when a student ________her hand and says, “I’m completely lost.” Do you know how incredibly________it is to say so when you’re pretty sure everyone else gets it?

I recently saw another________of ordinary courage in my son Charlie’s preschool. Parents were invited to________a music presentation by the kids. You know the________— twenty-five children singing with fifty-plus ________in the audience holding up cameras.

One girl cried her way through the entire________because she couldn’t see her mom. As I was telling Charlie goodbye,I saw her mom rush into the door,and immediately start ________the room for her daughter. Another mother walked by this stressed mom, shook her head and________her eyes.

Just then one more mom walked up to this now________mom and smiled. “I wasn’t just late. I________forgot.” She said, “It’s okay. We’re in the same boat.” The woman’s face________and she wiped away a tear. By the time she made it to the corner where the teacher was still________her daughter, she looked calm.

The mom who stopped and shared her story of________was practicing courage. She didn’t have to. Every time we choose________,we make the world a little kinder and braver.

I must admit I am not a very good listener. But what really_________me to become a good listener was helping my wife after her trachea(气管) surgery.

She couldn’t talk for almost a month because of the_________.She had a pad(便笺本) and would write down her thoughts and_________.Of course that was very slow and_________and I could see the growing depression each day. I found myself trying to_________what she was thinking since I knew she didn’t have the energy to write everything down, so I_________found myself trying to see the world from her eyes.

My wife couldn’t_________, which needed paying closer attention and made me a good listener. Because she couldn’t write out every word she wanted to speak, she had to be more_________about the words she chose. Because of this, our communication became more_________and we paid closer attention to what the other had to say.

After this_________ I couldn’t help thinking about how this might help people who are having relationship problems. I think that if one or two persons_________the only way they could_________was writing their thoughts and comments down, I believe it would be incredibly good therapy(疗法)and help people_________a lot of problems.Why not give it a shot if you are having any_________with someone? They don’t have to agree to the no talking_________because this experiment can be carried out by just one person.