One day in March, I just woke up tired of being fat. I was tired of feeling like my weight defined my whole existence. I wanted to play with my children and to be the kind of mother of whom they could be proud. I convinced my husband that our family could stand to get a little healthier and just like that it began.

I threw myself into discovering better ways to eat. I got all of the sugar and junk food out of the house and replaced them with fresh fruits and vegetables. For the first time in my life, I started to exercise every day. At first it was absolute torture. I kept the phone right by me just in case I had a heart attack on my stationary bike. Amazingly, just like it is supposed to, the weight started to come off.

The change spread through my whole family. My husband, who hadn’t cycled in years, bought a new road bike and soon convinced me to join him. By June, he had signed me up to do a twenty-two-mile charity ride with him.

Later that month, I completed a sixty-eight-mile ride in a little less than five hours. Before the ride, however, besides the cold weather, I wasn’t feeling well and had not eaten properly for such an effort. I told myself I wasn’t about to give up so easily. Ten miles in, I started sucking wind. Fifteen miles and my legs felt like they were made of lead. By twenty miles, my lungs were burning. That’s when I turned around and saw my three children cheering me on in the van behind me. My eight-year-old daughter Emalee shouted “Come on, Mom. We are proud of you.” I knew then that I couldn’t quit. I tell my children all the time that just because something is hard doesn’t mean that you stop doing it.

The importance of that ride was apparent after only a week.

It broke my heart to see her suffering from the hard ride.

My husband and I were excited about buying our first house. But our money was limited, and none of the houses in our price range seemed satisfactory.

One agent suggested a house in particular. Although her description sounded wonderful, the price was beyond our budget, so we turned down the offer. But she kept persuading us to have a look.

We finally did and it was love at first sight. It was our home, small and charming, overlooking a quiet lake. Walking through the rooms and talking with the owners, a nice elderly couple, we felt the warmth and happiness of the marriage within that home. Perfect as it was, the price remained too high for us. But every day, we would sit by the lake, looking at the house and dreaming of what it would be like to live in it. Days later, we made an offer—— far below the asking price. Surprisingly, they didn't laugh at us. They renewed their offer instead. It was also much more than we could afford, but far less than the original asking price.

The next day, we got a disappointing message that another buyer had offered a much higher price. Even so, we decided to talk with the owners directly. We made our final offer, which still was thousands of dollars less than the other buyer's bid（出价）. We knew it, but we had to try. Nobody knew if we could get it.

Several days later , we went to the owners' home after we made our final offer

The owner looked at us and said

My father asked me to chat with him for a while. Actually, I was unwilling to listen to his talking endlessly as he always did. My father was a lawyer, but I never wanted to go to law school or follow his path through life.

As was expected, he cleared his throat and started to say, “Er... What... What do you really want to do in the gorgeous(灿烂的) future?”

I was silent for a moment playing with the cell phone. I kept thinking, “Should I tell him my true thoughts? What if he gets angry? What if I let him down?” later I replied, “Well, I want to be a writer.”

I guessed this may be not the answer he would expect. But surprisingly, “Interesting idea!” he answered. I was shocked, speaking in a low voice with hesitation.

“Are you serious, dad?”

“Well, you need confidence and good preparations, and you still have plenty of time. You need to find out what you really enjoy now. Look, it’s late. Let’s take the boat out tomorrow morning, just you and me. Maybe we can catch some crabs (螃蟹) for dinner, and we can talk more.”

Early next morning we packed up the equipment and set off for the coast. We didn’t talk much, but enjoyed the sound of the seabirds and the sight of the coastline.

There were no big waves and blinding sunlight at that time. “Let’s see if we are lucky,” he said, picked up a web basket with a rope tied and threw it into the sea. We waited a while, then my father stood up and said, “Give me a hand with this,” and we pulled up the crab cage onto the deck.

To our joy, the cage was filled with dozens of soft shell crabs. Squatting (蹲) down, we watched them for a moment. At first they fought against each other to climb out hard, trying to escape. Many were pulled back into the cage. Later, some gave up, but there were still some crabs trying to escape again and again.