My dad doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would bake great bread, but he is and he does. Every Saturday he produces homemade bread. When he’s done, the whole house smells delicious.

The rest of the week, Dad fixes cars at work. The shop where Dad works doesn’t have enough work, so he’s under a lot of stress. I link Dad began baking bread to help him relax. I’ve been feeling kind of stressed out myself since I found out I didn’t make the school swim team. Now I have to wait a whole year to try out again. Plus, I’m taking some difficult classes this year.

I think Dad knew I was feeling bad. Last Saturday he asked me how things were going. I said OK, even though I didn’t feel OK at all. He looked at me for a moment, and then he said it was time for me to help. Then he headed to the kitchen.

I followed right behind him. Once we were there, Dad got out his big mixing bowl, handed me a large wooden spoon, and told me to mix while he added the ingredients. Dad isn’t big on measuring, but he knows how much of each ingredient to use, and the bread always turns out great.

When I finished stirring, Dad showed me how to knead the dough(揉面团). Next came the most difficult part-doing nothing. We put the dough back into the bowl and. then we waited for more than an hour for the dough to slowly rise and double in size. Next, we divided it into two and waited for it to rise again. Afterward, we put the dough into pans and waited another hour for the dough to rise and double.

Dad said the waiting is always the hardest part. “It’s hard to resist(抵制)putting the dough directly into the oven(烤箱), but if you do, the bread will be hard. The most important lesson of all is learning to be patient.” Dad taught me more than how to bake bread.

The evidence for harmony (和睦) may not be obvious in some families. But it seems that four out of five young people now get on with their parents.

An important new study into teenage attitudes shows that their family life is more harmonious than it has ever been in the past. “We were surprised by just how positive today’s young people seem to be about their families,” says one member of the research team. “They’re expected to be rebellious (叛逆的) but actually they have other things in their minds; they want a car and other material goods, and they worry whether school is serving them well. There’re more negotiations (协商) between parents and children, and children expect to take part in the family decision­making process.”

So it seems that this generation of parents is much more likely than parents of 30 years ago to treat their children as friends. “My parents are happy to discuss things with me and willing to listen to me,” says 17­ year old Daniel Lazall. “I always tell them when I’m going out. As long as they know what I’m doing, they’re fine with it.” Susan Crome, who is now 21, agrees. “Looking back on the last 10 years, there was a lot of what you could call negotiations. For example, as long as I’d done all my homework, I could go out on a Saturday night. But I think my grandparents were a lot stricter with my parents than that.”

One of the researchers comments, “Our astonishment that teenagers say they get along well with their parents comes because of a brief period in our social history when teenagers were regarded as different beings. But that idea of rebelling and breaking away from their parents really only happened during that one time in the 1960s when everyone rebelled. Now, the situation has changed.”

Back in 1958, I was crazy about the Norfolk and Western 746. The smooth bullet-nose engine with its orange and yellow lines and shiny streamline d black tender (车厢) seemed to have cast a spell on me.

Together the engine and tender measured a little shy of 2 feet — enormous by the toy train standards of the day. Even better, the 746 had a working headlight and smoker, and its tender sang high.

Unfortunately, the amazing 746 also had an amazing price — $50, equal to about $450 today. That was far more than my grandfather could afford. Instead, I had to be content with his little Lionel plastic, which was SIX INCHES shorter than the 746 and had no headlight, no smoker or no sound! But that was the best that my grandfather could give me at that time.

Years passed, and I was in my 30s. Superior sound systems and computer controls dominated toy trains. I never gave a look. My interest in toy trains, I firmly believed, had faded, so did my admiration for the 746, since my grandfather was not with me. The 746 was never called to mind. On an ordinary day, however, I happened to see the 746 outside the window of a train show. Just one-look, I could not look away. Childhood memories that I tried to hide in the depths of my heart raced through my mind, happy or sad.

That day I took the 746 home and placed it in the center of the room, and let my childhood dream sing its way around me. Smoke rose out from the engine and the soft song sounded from its tender. It seemed as if I could see the soft light in grandfather’s eyes and hear his cheerful laughter.