It was a few years ago, and I took a holiday-season job in a video store. One day, an elderly woman _________ my store, along with a young woman who I _________ was her daughter. The daughter showed _________, rolling her eyes, sighing and checking her watch every few seconds.

The elderly woman separated from the young one and _________ to search through the DVDS on the nearest shelf. I _______ and asked if I could help her _________ something. The woman smiled at me and showed me a title on a piece of paper.

Rather than rushing off to _________ the DVD for the woman, I asked her to walk with me _________ I could show her where she could find it. Looking _________, I think I wanted to enjoy her __________ for a moment. Something about her __________ movements reminded me of my mother, who passed away a few years ago.

As we walked along the back of the store, I __________ what was on the shelves: old television shows, action movies, cartoons, etc. The woman seemed ________ the unrushed company and casual conversation.

We ________ the movie, and I praised her for her choice. She smiled and told me it was one she had __________ when she was at her son’s age and that she hoped he would enjoy it as much as she had.

I ________ the old woman to the cashier and then stepped back toward the young woman. “Is that your __________?” I asked. She rolled her eyes and said, “Yeah.” Mind some __________?” I asked. “Of course not,” said the daughter.

“Cherish（珍爱）her,” I said. And then I answered her surprised expression by saying, “When she’s __________, it’s the little moments that’ll come back to you. Times like this. I know.” It was __________. I still missed my mom and remembered the times when I’d used my impatience to make her upset.

My mother looks just like many grandmothers — short and white-haired. She comes from an old, traditional family in Canada, where she now still lives. She was a civil servant. In short, she didn’t do_________things.

That all changed a few years ago. She began to_________me with what she described as “independence”. At that time, I didn’t fully understand what she was doing.

In early 2015, the year she turned 75, she informed me she’d_________a seven-night trip to Turkey, and that she was going alone. There was no way I could_________that. A little old lady not speaking a word of Turkish, with no_________of the laws and customs of the land — it was impossible!

My mother paid no attention to me. Off she went. When she returned, she told us it had been a wonderful success. As it_________, she had barely spent any time alone, after_________a taxi driver to show her around. He introduced her to a rug vendor (地毯商) — Mustafa, “a lovely fellow”, and she bought some rugs. The vendor had taken her address details and promised to_________them to Canada.

I couldn’t believe her naivety (幼稚) and explained that she had been_________. The vendor had her money. She neither had nor would be receiving any rugs.

Well, I was__________.

To my great shock, her rugs did arrive some weeks later, along with a lovely note from Mustafa. To my even greater surprise, the following year Mustafa himself arrived in Canada.

“I invited him for a cup of tea and he came,” my mother told me. I was__________because she hardly knew this man! But again, she paid little attention to me, telling me to stop being silly.

I wondered: “Is she not thinking straight?”__________I worried about her, Mum was thinking straighter than most of us.

Her__________seemed to be based on a realization that life needs to be lived, when there’s relatively little of it left. It__________me of the line “Get busy living or get busy dying.”

I don’t think Mum knows what her next big “thing” is going to be. But I am sure, she is open to any__________, which is something we all probably need right now. Live life to the fullest.

Once a man came to a wise man’s house and said, “I have many bad habits. Which one of them should I give up first?” The wise man said, “Never tell lies and always speak the truth.” The man _______to do so and went home.

At night, the man was about to go out to steal. Before _______, he _______for a moment about the promise he made to the wise man. “If he asks me where I have been, what shall I say? Shall I say I went out stealing? No, I can’t say that. But nor can I lie. If I tell the truth, everyone will start_______ me and call me a thief. I would be _______ for stealing.” So the man decided not to steal that night, and gave up this bad habit.

Next day, he wanted to drink wine. He was _______to do so when an idea stopped him. “What shall I say to the wise man if he asks me what I did during the day? I can’t tell a lie.” And so he dropped the idea of drinking wine.

_______, whenever the man thought of doing something bad, he remembered his promise to tell the truth _______. One by one, he gave up all his bad habits and became a very good person.

Telling the truth is a very good habit. If you always speak the truth, you can _______ yourself from a lot of trouble and become a person everyone likes and favors.

Make a promise: I __________ always speak the truth.