Until a few years ago, I was a calm person. If you were going to offend me or verbally ______ me, I almost never lost temper ______; of course I felt hurt, but I didn’t show it.

Then, one day, I met my husband and I fell in love with him, a proud ______ who loudly discusses things even with himself when he’s not happy. Things, however, got worse for me when we started ______ on things. He seemed really angry while I seemed polite. Truth is that I was ______ too, but I was used to not showing it on the outside. Fight after fight, he always acted as if nothing had happened a few minutes after each quarrel, while my moments of ______ discontent started to expand until they became hours, sometimes even days.

I felt this had to change and the conversation went ______ like this:

Me: “Either you change your ______ when we fight or I will start avoiding any discussion, otherwise this will ______ our relationship.”

Him: “Did you ______ the Mpemba Effect? If you put two ______ containers filled with the same amount of the same water into the freezer except that one has boiling water in it while the other one has water at ambient (周围的) ______, the boiling water will ______ faster than the ambient water. Baby, you got to boil first, to cool down faster. That’s why the Italians live longer than Canadians.”

The connection he suggested is to be ______, but I have learned a fact I didn’t know, one that has inspired me to understand that if I’m angry about something or someone, for that anger to disappear, it has to be towards the outside or otherwise it is like hiding ______ under the carpet: your house might look clean, but it is not.

Since every Saturday is cleaning day, I thought I'd use this moment to teach my kids housework.

On our first cleaning day, Sebastian started with good__________. He took a cloth to the kitchen but soon got__________by our biggest knife. I got to stop him before he__________himself. Sebastian is only seven.

Tashi, who's sixteen, came out of her bedroom at noon. I told Tashi sweeping was her__________. "Fine," she said, and she went to the bathroom. Forty minutes passed before she finished a really__________area.

How can my kids be so__________ at cleaning?

Of course, I knew. For sixteen years, Tashi's father has been __________for her. Sixteen years! Every morning, I pick up Sebastian's towel because it's just __________than asking him to do it.

The thing is, I don't remember learning much about cleaning from my__________. My parents were hands-off. My mom was always there,__________ after school I made my own snack. I got no__________with homework. If I wanted a new tennis racket(球拍), I had to__________cars in the neighborhood.

Maybe kids learn to clean not from learning__________to clean, but by having the freedom to learn how to do things __________their own.

Now, I ask the kids to do some__________by themselves because I think they would somehow__________how to do simple things. I can't say the kids do their chores__________or well. But they are in charge of their own dirty laundry.

Then yesterday, I got a small__________. After I went grocery shopping, I told the kids to unload the car, then I went to the bathroom. When I came out, I heard Tashi__________at Sebastian: Help me put the things away. You can't__________ Mom to do everything."

I ran into a stranger as he passed by. “Oh excuse me please” was my _________. He said: “Please excuse me too; I wasn’t watching for you.” We were very _________ this stranger and I. We went on our way and we said goodbye. But at home a _________ story is told.

Later that day, when I was cooking the evening meal, my daughter stood beside me very _________. When I _________, I nearly knocked her down. “Move out of the _________,” I said with a frown. She walked away, her little heart broken. I didn’t _________ how harshly (严厉地) I’d spoken.

While lay awake in bed that evening, my husband said to me, “While _________ a stranger, you are polite, but with the girl you love, you are _________. Go look on the kitchen floor and you’ll find some flowers by the door. Those are the flowers she brought for __________. She picked them herself: pink, yellow and blue. She stood quietly not to __________ the surprise, and you __________ saw the tears in her eyes.”

__________, my tears began to fall. I quietly went and knelt down by her bed. “Wake up, little girl,” I said. “Are these flowers you picked for me?” She smiled: “I found them out by the tree. I picked them __________ they’re pretty like you. I knew you’d like them, especially the blue.”

I said: “Daughter, I’m sorry for the way I __________ today. I __________ have yelled at you that way.”

She said: “Oh Mom, that’s okay. I love you anyway.”

I said: “Daughter, I love you too. And I do like the flowers, especially the blue.”

I had got the world __________ again. I’d __________ to be polite to people in the street—good __________ make society work. But a stranger is someone we meet once and then never see again—and __________ is for life.