One day, a professor entered the classroom and asked his students to prepare for a surprise test. They waited worriedly at their desks for the test to begin. The professor ________ the question papers, with the paper facing down as usual. After he gave them all out, he asked his students to ________ the paper and begin. To everyone’s surprise, there were no ________, just a black dot (小圆点) in the center of the page. The professor, seeing the ________ on everyone’s face, told them the following:

“I want you to write what you ________ there.”

The students got started on the inexplicable (费解的) task.

At the end of the class, the professor ________ all the answer papers and started reading each one of them aloud in front of all the students. All of them, with no ________, described the black dot, trying to explain its ________ in the middle of the sheet, etc. After all had been ________, the classroom was silent, and the professor began to ________: “I’m not going to grade this. I ________ wanted to give you something to think about. No one wrote about the ________ part of the paper. Everyone focused on the black dot, and the same happens in our ________. We have a white paper to observe, but we always focus on the dark spots. Our life is a ________ given to us with love and care, and we always have ________ to celebrate: nature renewing itself every day, our friends around us, the job that ________ our livelihood and the miracles (奇迹) we see every day.

________, we insist on focusing only on the dark spots: the health problems that worry us, the lack of money, the   ________ relationship with workmates, the ________ with a friend, etc.

The dark spots are very ________ compared to everything we have in our daily life, but they are the ones that pollute our minds.

The brown bear was walking quietly behind the pink duck, ready to put his paws around her neck and throw her into a pot of boiling soup.

We turned the________. While I laughed quietly at the impracticality of a bear boiling water to________a duck, I lifted my head to find little Victoria sat huddled next to my am, honestly________to turn the page and find her favorite pink creature in a bear's________.

My________began to wander. I________the Thursday when Victoria ran into the reading room showing a golden certificate from her________. "Best reader," it showed. A smile came across my face as I looked into the eyes of the 7-year-old who just last year was________in first grade________her reading was quite poor.

It was the same________that had filled my face six months before, when Victoria joined the________program. After spending the first term answering a lot of questions, I________that Victoria's talkative nature and________for answers overshadow her desire to________and read. I________her energy and great curiosity and fueled it with my own enthusiasm. For every________she presented, I took her to scan the library shelves________a related book. I watched her eyes grow with excitement as I________helped her press through the stories, a journey in search of her ________.

Though I go to the library each week to be these kids'________, I come out, having been their student. They have introduced me to a side of me who I never realized existed.

My dad gave my mother a coral rose necklace on their wedding anniversary(周年纪念日). ________ it was a card saying, “Even thorns (荆棘) have roses, too. Love, E.” After my father died, my mother ________ to wear the necklace.

In her ninety-first year, suffering from dementia(阿尔茨海默症), she moved to a nursing home near me in Connecticut. I made her new ________ as familiar as possible, ________ her walls with family photos. Before I left, she lifted the rose necklace off and handed it to me. Though Mom’s dementia has left her ________ memories, she remembers the ________ and the feelings that accompanied it, and ________ the words with me with a smile and a knowing nod.

Then the lockdown order came. I was terrified the isolation(隔离) would send her deeper into dementia and ________. It didn’t. Throughout, my mother’s attitude was ________. During the lockdown I ________ with her via Skype every day. From time to time, she would smile and ________ me, “You know, even thorns have roses, too.” Soon, these “on-the-screen visits”, became almost as ________ as seeing each other in person. With most of my usual activities stopped by the pandemic, I had enough time to spend some unrushed, ________ screen time with her.

Those ________ visits brought us closer and showed me that dementia had not taken her away. It only wore down the thorns and made ________ for a pretty, late-blooming rose.