A MOTHER'S DAY SURPRISE

The twins were filled with excitement as they thought of the surprise they were planning for Mother's Day. How pleased and proud Mother would be when they brought her breakfast in bed. They planned to make French toast and chicken porridge. They had watched their mother in the kitchen. There was nothing to it. Jenna and Jeff knew exactly what to do.

The big day came at last. The alarm rang at 6 a. m. The pair went down the stairs quietly to the kitchen. They decided to boil the porridge first. They put some rice into a pot of water and left it to boil while they made the French toast. Jeff broke two eggs into a plate and added in some milk. Jenna found the bread and put two slices into the egg mixture. Next, Jeff turned on the second stove burner to heat up the frying pan. Everything was going smoothly until Jeff started frying the bread. The pan was too hot and the bread turned black within seconds. Jenna threw the burnt piece into the sink and put in the other slice of bread. This time, she turned down the fire so it cooked nicely.

Then Jeff noticed steam shooting out of the pot and the lid starting to shake. The next minute, the porridge boiled over and put out the fire. Jenna panicked. Thankfully, Jeff stayed calm and turned off the gas quickly. But the stove was a mess now. Jenna told Jeff to clean it up so they could continue to cook the rest of the porridge. But Jeff's hand touched the hot burner and he gave a cry of pain. Jenna made him put his hand in cold water. Then she caught the smell of burning. Oh dear! The piece of bread in the pan had turned black as well.

As the twins looked around them in disappointment, their father appeared.

He was an old man who fished alone in a small boat in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy’s parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unluck, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week. It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his boat empty and he always went down to help carry either the fishing lines or the spear. The sail was old and, rolled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.

The old man was very thin with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown spots of the skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The spots ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep scar from handling heavy fish on the thick ropes. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions (侵蚀) in a fishless desert. Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.

“Santiago,” the boy said to him as they climbed the bank from where the boat was pulled up. “I could go with you again. We’ve made some money.”

The old man had taught the boy to fish and the boy loved him. :

“No,” the old man said. “You’re with a lucky boat. Stay with them,”

“But remember how you went eighty-seven days without fish and then we caught big ones every day for three weeks.

“I remember,” the old man said. “I know you did not leave me because you doubted.”