My mother had me when she was 19. Although I did not grow up with her， I know she's kind to me because she wants to____me the best of everything. I____her when I was a teenager. It was a____ year with various kinds of quarrels and____. We were through heaven and hell ____we made it through. We have a different kind of ____，the kind of bond that you can____ from a mother and a daughter with a 19﹣year﹣age ____.

We are not the hugging﹣kissing﹣I﹣love﹣you type. For some reason I find it____to hug my mom. I make my mom feel loved and special as a friend.

We lend our____to each other from jewels to books. We do things like shopping for clothes， movies， haircuts____in our free time. I usually ask her for____on matter important to me. It creates a sense of____in her that I value her ideas. From fashion advice on my party night， to the courses I ought to ____ when I entered university， to my recent ____to get married and move out of the country， I____my mother.

And every time she gives me her thoughts， I can see her eyes ____softly， either from sadness or happiness， although I can never be too ____. But there's one thing I am certain I know my mother knows how____I am and that I love her with all my heart， even if I don't say it as ____as I should.

Life, as I know, has changed. My beloved nanny, a stand-in parent in the absence of my father, had cancer. It was terminal.

As she watched Getaway on television, she talked to me that she’d never_________Australia and that she would never later. I_________the sadness, tears streaming down my face. Overwhelmed with much grief, I_________the power of Facebook and the collective strength of human empathy. I raced from work to_________strangers on the internet. “My nanny was ill and she will never see the world. Please send her postcards so she can see the world from her armchair. I can offer nothing but_________.”

Surprisingly, one afternoon, a postcard from the United States arrived in our letterbox. That simple postcard was to me a beacon of light in a lonely and_________chapter. I held it in my hands, read and re-read the words, feeling something I hadn’t felt in a while—_________. From that day, our letterbox became the_________for postcards from all over the world. Tears of happiness mixed with_________fell onto those postcards.

My dream of armchair travels became a__________. We travelled the world together. Her living room became a departure hall. Her bed became an airport lounge and our flights__________daily. Whatever she shared became__________. Our very last flight departed on a warm morning in early August in 2018. My dearest travel companion__________on in another time and place.

Among the hushed memories, the__________, over 100 of them, made their final journey to Nanny’s farewell. My nanny, a woman who worried she would never see the world, but did it without regret.

I have recovered from great loss knowing that life consists of first greetings and final partings. Flights arrive and then depart. People are__________to us, and taken away.

There was a time when I thought my dad didn’t know a thing about being a good father. I couldn’t _________ him ever saying the words “I _________ you.” It seems to me his only purpose in life was to say “No” to anywhere I wanted to go and anything I wanted to do, including getting a car. Some parents bought their kids cars when they got their driver’s licenses. Not my dad—he said that I’d have to get a job and buy my own.

So that is what I did. I got a job at a very nice restaurant and _________ every penny I could and when I had enough to buy my car, I did! The day I brought that car home, my dad was the first one I wanted to show it off to. “Look, dad, a car of my own. If you ever want a ride, I’ll only _________ you five dollars.” I offered with a smile. “I see,” was all he said.

One day, there was something wrong with my father’s truck. So he needed a _________ to work. The sun wasn’t even up when we left the house, _________ it was already getting warm out. It was going to be a (n) _________ day. As I dropped my dad off, I watched him, dressed in his work clothes, getting his _________ from the truck(车尾箱)of my car. Watching his sun weathered face, and even from a distance I could tell there were _________ lines than I ever remembered being there before. I realized how hard my dad works for the family. My father is a cement finisher(水泥修整工).

In that instant, it __________ to me that he actually __________ on his hands and knees to sweat over hot concrete(混凝土)to make a living for his family. And he did this day in and day out, however hot it got. Never, not once, had I heard him __________ about it. To him we were “worth” it. And never once did he “charge” us for it.

When he closed the trunk, his tools set off to the side, he walked over to my window to __________ me five dollars. I rolled down the window and said “Good-bye, dad. Keep your five dollars. It’s my __________. Don’t work too hard. I love you.”

His __________ met mine, then glanced away in the direction of his waiting tools, he cleared his throat and said, “Oh, and... me, too.”