Our county had issued a stay-at-home order. This was _______ to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, but it made me _______. How would my boys _______ the situation when cooped up (关起来) together for weeks on end?

My 15-year-old twins, Breckan and Brennan, _______ each other. If they were in the same room for more than 10 minutes, there was going to be a _______. For years, our house functioned well with the boys in _______ spaces. That was why the order filled me with such _______.

On the ninth day, I heard voices and laughter coming from Brennan’s room. That sounded like my boys but it was _______, I thought. Maybe it was the TV. I decided to go down the hall to _______. I opened the door, and my breath caught in my throat. Both my sons were sitting on the edge of the bed, video game controllers in hand and ________ on their faces. Was I ________ things? Was it true that the boys ________ so well? A week later, I saw the twins showing each other how to perform better on the trampoline (蹦床). This was what I’d always ________ for! Filled with joy, I felt a little ________ when so much of the rest of the world was suffering during the pandemic.

In our house, there was more ________ than we’d ever known. I didn’t ________ why. One evening, I stopped by Breckan’s room for our nightly ________ before I went to bed. “Hey, what has happened between you and your brother ________?” I asked. Breckan shrugged, “I don’t know, Mom. We’ve grown up, I guess.” Leave it to me, their mom, to try to ________ what has happened and put it into words! ________, the whys and wherefores don’t matter, really. What does matter is the love between them.

My daughter Beth’s and my love of butterflies goes back many years. After a long _______against cancer, my mom passed away when I was only 25 years old. Beth was only a baby at that time and _______ had any memories of her grandma. I tried to _______ it by telling her _______ of my mom.

One day when she was only seven or so and we were outside at the playground, Beth suddenly said how much she missed her grandma and how_______it would be if she could play with her． I went to_______her， saying that maybe she was hitching a ride on the back of a_______to look at us and_______what we were doing.

At that very moment, a butterfly _______and flew around Beth’s face and then flew away. We both laughed with our hearts full of love and________.

Since that moment all of those years ago, both Beth and I seem to________butterflies like flowers. Whenever we are outside, they seem to fly down, circle around us, take a(n) ________ look, and then fly away. And we are________of my mom’s love in that case. The only time this doesn’t________is during the coldest months of the year when there are no________of any kind.