Jack threw the papers on my desk. “Next time you want to change anything, ask me first,” he said. I had changed a long sentence and corrected its grammar — something I thought I was paid to do.

Several days later, he made me angry again. I went to his office, prepared to lose my job if need be, but not before I let the man know how I felt. “What?” he said nervously.

Suddenly I knew what I had to do. “Jack, the way you’ve been treating me is wrong. And it’s wrong for me to allow it to continue,” I said. “I want to make you a promise. I will be a friend.” The next day I brought some cakes to Jack’s office. Every time I saw Jack in the hall, I smiled at him. After all, that’s what friends do.

One year after our talk, I was told that I had breast cancer . When I was in hospital, my friends tried to find the right words to say, but no one could. The last day of my hospital stay, the door opened and Jack walked over to my bed. “Tulips (郁金香),” he placed some bulbs   beside me and said, “If you plant them when you get home, you’ll be there to see them when they come up.” Tears filled my eyes.

In a moment when I prayed for just the right words, a man with few words said the right thing. After all, that’s what friends do. Now, I have seen those tulips push through the soil every spring for over ten years.

I was sitting at my kitchen table the other day with a pen, notebook, calculator and a pile of bills. I was doing my monthly budget. There were bills for electric water, rent, insurance, the car payment, the phone bill, and the cable bill. Plus money needed to be set aside for food, gas, clothes and hopefully a little left over to save for those unexpected bills that always seemed to show up. When I was done, I shook my head, closed my eyes and thought of a time long ago when I would regularly get treasures.

When I was a boy. we lived across the road from Camp Caesar. It held week long camps all through the summer and my grandma who I lovingly called “Nanny” worked in her big kitchen. I remember slipping there getting a smile, a hug, a kiss and a hot roll from Nanny. Then she would always take deep in her pockets and pull out a treasure, a shiny quarter. She would give it to me and I would run down the hill to either get an ice cold can of coke from the pop machine or I would head to the camp’s swimming pool where I could buy a warm cup of cherry coke for 15 cents and a tiny 10 cent bag of chips from a stand. I took my time because it was always a big decision. It was nice too feeling so rich for a few minutes.

Looking back now I can see that the real treasure was not the quarter at all. It was the love with which Nanny gave it to me. I would have still visited her at work every day if I had never gotten a single quarter. It was her smile, hugs, and kisses that were priceless in my heart then and now.

The old saying is true, “With your work you can make a living, but it is with your love that you make a life.” You can always welcome love into your heart, soul and mind. And you can always share your love with others. It is that one treasure that lasts forever.

As my husband and I drove down a country road, we passed a fire station with a sign that read, “Are you ready for the next storm?” Our area had just been in the path of Hurricane Irma, causing downed trees and power off. 【小题1】

We have had our share of storms in the past--a snowstorm and other heavy snows that knocked down trees, sometimes up to a week at a time. 【小题2】 It made later storms easier to bear.

【小题3】 We bought a battery-operated radio to keep up with the news. We stocked up on batteries so that we’d have plenty for extended power failures. We make sure our grill is ready and its tank is full, and we purchase food that can be easily prepared and then cooked or heated on the grill. And we don’t forget to buy emergency chocolate! We have book lights to read in the dark. We keep our car gas tanks full and have emergency cash on hand.

We’re ready for the next storm, but we wouldn’t have learned to do all those things if we hadn’t encountered a storm in the past. 【小题4】Those little storms in our lives are never fun, but they prepare us for the big trials coming to us. They can teach us some valuable lessons.

Are you ready for the next storm? 【小题5】