In my childhood, my mother spent her evening hours doing something for someone else. Sometimes she knitted (编织) hats for babies, and at other times, she cooked chicken soup for sick neighbors. Therefore, I wasn’t ________ when one evening my mother announced she had taken on a new project.

“I am going to telephone seniors (老年人),” said my mother. “Every ________? But you don’t even know these people.” “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “What’s important is that I ________.” I was sixteen years old and couldn’t understand why my mother was willing to spend her evenings talking to ________. She had friends and my two older sisters to call if she felt lonely. “They will talk your ear off. Some people didn’t even stop to catch ________,” I said.

My attitude (态度) didn’t stop my mother’s love for the project. That evening, I listened as she asked the woman on the other line about her day and what she had eaten for dinner. When she finished the call, I said, “________ do you care whether she had cookies or rice pudding for dessert?” My mother said, “I’m the ________ person she talked to today.”

It took me more than thirty years to ________ understand the meaning of my mother’s words. Now, as my mother is nearing eighty, I find myself thinking about those nightly _______ she used to make. I am often the only person who telephones my mother, and sometimes I’m the only person she speaks to all day. I ask her what she cooked for dinner, but mostly I just listen as she describes a walk she took, or how her dog Lucky stole foods from the refrigerator. I ________ that my mother’s calls were life lines, which made sure housebound seniors to keep in touch with the world. Without her, their world would have been empty.