Grandma was going to turn eighty-two on Friday. I heard Mom ordering a cake from the   bakery over the phone. “Don’t put any icing on it,” she said, “Just a plain angel cake.” Angel cake with fresh strawberries was her favorite. So Mum was ready.

That afternoon when Dad came home, he showed me the phone he had bought for Grandma.   “It has speed-dialing,” he said. “She won’t have to push so many buttons when she calls the doctor’s office or her sister.” Dad looked pleased. “Her fingers are so stiff with arthritis ( 关节炎)that the phone seems a good idea.”

But what about me? Here I was with only one dollar in my pocket and one night to think of a gift. Even though Mom always insisted that “it’s the thought that counts,” I had a big problem. My mind was even more empty of ideas than my wallet was empty of money.

When I have a problem, it sometimes helps to shoot a few baskets in the driveway. Dribble( 运球), shoot, rebound.

For a while I just played without even trying to think. I began to remember back before Granddad died. When we used to visit them in Kentucky, Granddad showed me how to do a jump shot. Thinking about Granddad made me sigh. Grandma’s life was a lot happier when he was alive.

Swish! I’d made two in a row.

Suddenly, I remembered a green glass dish in the shape of a leaf that Grandma used to keep on a table back in Kentucky. It was always full of those red-and-white-striped peppermint candies（薄荷糖）. I hadn’t thought of that dish for a long time. Maybe it was lost or broken when Dad rented the truck and brought Grandma and the belongings to Ohio.

Just thinking about that candy dish made me taste the peppermint slowly dissolving on my tongue. I could almost hear Grandma saying，“Help yourself to a piece of peppermint, Burt.” That voice had a smile behind it. It was a voice I hadn’t heard for a long time.

Aha! I took one last shot, then dribbled to the back door, ran up the steps two at a time, and grabbed my wallet.

The moment that Jiang Mengnan received the Touching China Person of the Year Award for 2021, she said she most wanted to express her gratitude to her parents. Born in 1992 in Yizhang county, Hunan Province, Jiang’s world has been silent since she was 6 months old, when some drugs she was given damaged her hearing. So, Jiang’s parents, both middle school teachers, taught her to learn vocalization and lip reading.

Jiang put her hands on the throats of her parents when they talked and felt the vibration (震动) of the vocal cords (声带) to learn to speak. When reading Pinyin, she carefully looked at the lips of other people! s pronunciations to know the formation of each syllable. Mastering a single word can take at least 1000 practice attempts for Jiang. Furthermore, different people had different mouth movements, which added difficulty to her social contacts and school life when it came to lip reading.

Through lip reading and self-study, she was able to keep up with learning and was accepted by Jilin University School of Pharmacy with a high score of 615 on the college entrance examination. In 2018, she was accepted as a PhD candidate at Tsinghua University’s School of Life Sciences.

Jiang’s story is one of victory over adversity. More importantly, she is helping inspire disabled children in her native Hunan Province and beyond to struggle for success. Because of her hearing loss, she couldn’t be a doctor. Instead, she chose pharmacy (药剂学) to help reduce people’s pain and assist their recovery. Another crucial way she aims to contribute is by teaching children in similar situations not to be limited by their disability. As often as she can, Jiang visits special education schools and meets with students. She tells them to do their best to achieve as much as a so-called healthy person.

She stressed that people with disabilities have no need to feel discouraged, as they can do the same or even better than non-disabled people around them. When God closes a door, he opens a window, and this girl believes that all challenges are gifts.

My brother Stanley died last January from cancer，and I spent a lot of time with him in hospital over his last few months. I witnessed the care he received and，at the time，I thought it was poor. It shocked and hurt me.

While Stanley was sick，I was a medical student. I therefore put a lot of time and energy in the medical profession. It gave me an insider's view of the care Stanley received，when most people spending time with a very sick loved one only have an outside view. However，as I see now it made me judge the care that his doctors and nurses gave him too harshly(严厉的).

We experienced long waits in emergency departments，and doctors were unsure of the details of Stanley's case. We waited around for doctors to arrive，but they seldom turned up. But worst of all was Stanley's senior doctor. Near the end，he announced coldly that there was nothing left to try. “All the choices have been used，"he said. And with that，he left，never to be seen again.

All this affected the way I thought about my studies. Did I want to work in a field where people treated patients as if they were numbers on a chart？After Stanley died，I finished my studies and graduated with all the rest of students in my year. They went on to get jobs in hospitals，while I took a year out. I simply couldn't face working in medicine.

Finally，I applied for and got a position as a cancer doctor in a busy clinic in a big city. Now I was a cancer doctor myself，and I often had to tell patients bad news. It is a terribly difficult thing to inform someone that they have a serious illness. I also found that I couldn't always answer patients' questions. They would want to know whether they could be cured，or how long they would live，but it wasn't always possible to say.

It was then that I understood what difficult job health providers do. It made me think back to my experiences with doctors and nurses when Stanley was sick. Perhaps what I had thought was unprofessionalism(不专业)or coldness was just a reflection of the demanding nature of the work.

I began to see my patients as Stanley，and myself no longer as his sister，but one of his caregivers.

Now I was in their shoes-the people who spend every day caring for others.

I still miss Stanley horribly，but at least now the anger has gone.