The Gift at the Parking Lot

I never thought I would be writing about a trip to the convenience store. It was just a month after my grandmother had ______ and I did useless things hoping to fill the hole in my heart and make me forget the pain.

In the store, I was upset because I couldn’t even remember what I went there to buy so I ended up buying something ______. As I walked out of the store to get my car, I was ______ angry at everything that was going on around me which was a very common feeling at that time. Feeling ______, my belief in God was beginning to fade.

Suddenly, a woman driving right by my side rolled down her_______．“Excuse me, excuse me.” she said loudly. _____ she was going to ask for my parking spot, I ______ pointed to my car. “No, excuse me,” she said again.

At this point, I felt I had no alternative but to see what this ______ lady wanted. As I got closer, I realized that she was ______ something in her bag.Surprisingly, I was overcome with a sense of relief while others would be nervous in this situation. Finally, she ______ me a booklet, which read “What Hope for Dead Loved Ones?” “Maybe you need this, ” she said calmly with a warm smile on her face. However, ______ I could thank her, she was gone.

I felt a sense of ______ as I opened the first page. It ______ how people pass on, but their spirit ______ with us. This was the first time since my grandma had died that I had felt her with me and I began to feel hope again. It was a unique ______. And, I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.

As a man was passing the elephants, he suddenly stopped and________ that some large creatures were being held by only a small rope________ to their front leg. No chains, no cages. It was________ that the elephants could, at anytime ________ their ropes. For some reason, ________，they did not .

He saw a trainer nearby, and asked why these animals just stood there and made no________ to get away. “Well,” the trainer said, “when they are very young and much smaller, we use the same________ rope to tie them and, at that age, it’s enough to________ them. As they grow up, they are________ to believing they cannot break away. They believe the rope and still hold them, so they never try to break free.

The man was________. These animals could at any time break free from their________ but because they believe they couldn't, they were________ right where they are.

Like the elephants, how many of us________ hanging onto a(n) ________ that we cannot do something, simply because we failed at it once before?

Failure is part of learning; we should never give up the________ in life.

Many years ago, I bought a house in the Garfagnana, where we still go every summer. The first time we ______ there, we heard the chug chug-chug of a motorbike ______ its way down the hill toward us. It was ______ called Mario, coming to ______ us a box containing some tomatoes and a bottle of wine. It was a very nice ______ for him to make. But when we looked at the tomatoes, we were ______ because they were so misshapen: not at all like the nice, round, ______ things you get in a supermarket. And the wine was cloudy, in a funny old bottle with no label (标签) on it. These can’t be any ______, we thought. But we were ______ his kindness, so we ______ them.

What we discovered is that it’s ______ to judge what you eat only by its ______. Those tomatoes had ______ that reminded me of the ones my uncle used to grow when I was a child. Nowadays supermarket tomatoes ______ perfect but taste of water. Nobody’s going to have a ______ memory of those. It’s a surprise they haven’t managed to grow square ones so that they can ______ them easily. Mario’s wine may have been cloudy and come out of an old bottle, but it was ______.

It’s good to eat things at the correct time, when they’re ______, and as close as possible to where they were ______. What Mario had ______ us was the taste of the Garfagnana.