I was fifteen months old, a happy carefree kid until the day fell. It was a bad fall. I landed on a glass rabbit which cut my eye badly enough to blind it. Trying to save the eye, the doctors stitched the eyeball together where it was cut, leaving a big ugly scar in the middle of my eye. The attempt failed, but my mama, in all of her wisdom, found a doctor who knew that if the eye were removed wholly, my face would grow up badly twisted, so my scarred, sightless, cloudy and gray eye lived on with me. And as I grew, this sightless eye in so many ways controlled me.

I walked with my face looking at the floor so people would not see the ugly me. Sometimes people, even strangers, asked me embarrassing questions or made hurtful remarks. When the kids played games, I was always the “monster”. I grew up imagining that people looked at me in an unusual way, as if my appearance were my fault. I always felt like I was a freak(怪人).

Yet mama would say to me, at every turn, “Hold your head up high and face the world.” It became a litany that I relied on. She had started when I was young. She would hold me in her arms and stroke my hair and say, “If you hold your head up high, it will be okay, and people will see your beautiful soul.” She continued this message whenever I wanted to hide. Those words have meant different things to me over the years. As a little child, I thought mama meant, “Be careful or you will fall down or bump into something because you are not looking.” As an adolescent, even though I tended to look down to hide my shame, I found that sometimes when I held my head up high and let people know me, they liked me. My mama’s words helped me begin to realize that by letting people look at my face, I let them recognize the intelligence and beauty behind both eyes even if they couldn’t see it on the surface.

In high school I was successful both academically and socially. I was even elected class president, but on the inside, I still felt like a freak. All I really wanted was to look like everyone else. When things got really bad, I would cry to my mama and she would look at me with loving eyes and say, “Hold your head up high and face the world. Let them see the beauty that is inside.”

When I met the man who became my partner for life, we looked each other straight in the eye, and he told me I was beautiful inside and out. He meant it. My mama’s love and encouragement were the spark that gave me the confidence to overcome my own doubt. I had faced adversity, encountered my problems head on, and learned not only to appreciate myself but to have deep compassion for others.

“Hold your head up high”, has been heard many times in my home. Each of my children has felt its invitation. The gift my mama gave me lives on in another generation.

The pen is more powerful than the sword．There have been many writers who use their pens to write things that were wrong．Mrs Harriet Beecher Stowe was one of them．

She was born in the U．S．A．in 1811．One of her books not only made her famous but has been described as one that excited the world, and was helpful in causing a civil war and freeing the enslaved race．The civil war was the American Civil War of 1861, in which the Northern States fought the Southern States and finally won．

This book that shook the world was called UncleTom'sCabin．There was a time when every English­speaking man, woman, and child had read this novel that did so much to stop slavery．Not many people read it today, but it is still very interesting． The book has shown us how a warm­hearted writer can arouse people's sympathies．The author herself had neither been to the Southern States nor seen a slave．The Southern Americans were very angry at the book, which they said did not at all represent the true state of affairs, but the Northern Americans were widely excited over it, and were so inspired by it that they were ready to go to war to set the slaves free．

For the past three months, I have been moonlighting (兼职) as a tea lady. A few weeks into lockdown and at the height of the COVID-19 crisis, my father’s care home had become desperately understaffed. So I volunteered my services.

I will admit that I also wanted to keep an eye on my father. Ever since he was diagnosed with dementia (痴呆), I had become concerned about his well-being. So I. turned up, put on a plastic apron and began wheeling a teapot around the ground floor.

It was a peculiar kind of job at first. I saw how the carers were putting themselves on the line every day. And how do you ask a dementia patient who has lost almost all their powers of speech and hearing how many sugars they want in their tea? I would often come away sweating. And saddened. The home lost a lot of patients to COVID-19 in a short span of time and seeing the suddenly empty beds was shocking.

But it was also - surprisingly - good fun. There were jokes shared by carers and the stories the elderly residents told. The place grew on me until it became the highlight of my day. I looked forward to seeing the old lady who would say “Thank you” and blow me a kiss every time I left her a cup of tea. Another said he’d started painting later in life and now his amazing work hung all around his room. And there was a former university lecturer who had researched nursing and never left a crossword unfinished.

The figures I had passed so often taught me that sitting by a sunny window drinking a cup of warm tea held its value. I have read about the meditative (冥想的) effects of running and I found the same absorbing feeling in the ritual of making tea. It is simple, wholesome, and brings calmness. To me, this has been lockdown’s greatest gift.