My little daughter, you taught me how selfless the real love is!

My wife called, “How long will you be with that _____? Could you come here and make your darling daughter eat her food?” I threw the paper away and _____ to the place. My daughter Sindu sat there, tears welling up in her eyes. In front of her was a big bowl of rice.

I _____ the bowl and said, “Sindu, why not take a few mouthfuls of the rice?”

“OK, Dad. I will eat — not just a few mouthfuls, _____ the whole lot of this. But…” Sindu hesitated. “Dad, if I eat the whole rice, will you give me what I _____?”

“Promise,”I _____.

After eating the rice painfully, Sindu came to me, her eyes wide with _____. Now I became a bit _____. I said, “Dear, you shouldn’t insist on _____ a computer or any such ______ things. Dad does not have that kind of money right now.” ______, “I want to have my hair shaved off (剃掉), this Sunday!” was her requirement, which was far ______ my belief.

On Monday morning, I ______ Sindu at her school and watched her walking towards her classroom. She turned around and ______. I waved back with a smile. Just then, a boy, who just got out of a car, shouted, “Sindu, please wait for me!” What ______ me was the hairless head of that boy.

“Sir, your daughter is ______ indeed!” Without introducing herself, a lady standing beside me continued, “That boy is my son, who lost all his ______ because of a disease. He ______ to come back to school for fearing the unintentional (无意的) but ______ teases (取笑) of the schoolmates. Sindu visited him last week, and promised him that she would take care of the teasing problem. But I ______ imagined she would cut her lovely hair for my son!”

   When Dekalb Walcott Ш was just 8 years old, his father, a Chicago fire chief, let him tag along on a call. Dekalb says a lot of kids idolized (崇拜) basketball player Michael Jordan when he was growing up in Chicago in the1990s. Not him.

“I wanted to be like Dekalb Walcott Jr, ”he says of his father. So when his dad asked if he wanted to go on that call with him when he was 8, Dekalb was excited. “I'm jumping up and down, saying, ‘Mom, can I go? Can I go?’”

The experience changed Dekalb's life, and he told his dad on a visit to StoryCorps. “My eyes got big the moment the alarm went off, ” the younger Dekalb says. “This is the life that I want to live someday. ”

Now 27, the younger Dekalb is living that life. He became a firefighter at 21 and went to work alongside his dad at the Chicago Fire Department. Before his father retired, the pair even went out on a call together-father supervising (监督)son.

“You know, it's everything for me to watch young row, ”his father says. But he also recalls worrying about one particular fire that his son faced.

“I received a phone call that night. And they said, ‘Well, your son was at this fire. ' I said, ‘OK, which way is this conversation going to go?'”Dekalb Walcott Jr. recalls.

“And they said, ‘But he's OK. And he put it out all by himself. Everybody here was proud of him. ’”

“And the word went around, ‘Who was out there managing that fire? Oh, that’s Walcott!That's Walcott up there!’So, you know, moments like that, it's heaven on earth for a dad. ”

Dekalb Walcott Jr. has retired. The younger Dekalb says he's proud of being a second-generation firefighter. “You know, it makes me look forward to fatherhood as well, because I'm definitely looking forward to passing that torch (火把) down  to my son. ”

Challenges of life are of great important in our growth. It reminds me of my days which I joined in the military training after I entered senior high school. It was the first time I have lived away from my home, so I found difficult to fit in. And the training officer was strict on me. I once thought I couldn’t stick to the end. But final, I made it. The training made it much easy for me to adapt to my future life. And the difficulties I came across have now became a precious memory in my life.

In a short, it’s better to learning to regard the challenges of life as the stepping stone to future success and make the best of them.

   It was a winter morning, just a couple of weeks before Christmas 2005. While most people were warming up their cars, Trevor, my husband, had to get up early to ride his bike four kilometers away from home to work. On arrival, he parked his bike outside the back door as he usually does. After putting in 10 hours of labor, he returned to find his bike gone.

The bike, a black Kona 18 speed, was our only transport. Trevor used it to get to work, putting in 60-hour weeks to support his young family. And the bike was also used to get groceries (食品杂货), saving us from having to walk long distances from where we live.

I was so sad that someone would steal our bike that I wrote to the newspaper and told them our story. Shortly after that, several people in our area offered to help. One wonderful stranger even bought a bike, then called my husband to pick it up. Once again my husband had a way to get to and from his job. It really is an honor that a complete stranger would go out of their way for someone they have never met before.

People say that a smile can be passed from one person to another, but acts of kindness from strangers are even more so. This experience has had a spreading effect in our lives because it strengthened our faith in humanity (人性) as a whole. And it has influenced (影响) us to be more mindful of ways we, too, can share with others. No matter how big or how small, an act of kindness shows that someone cares. And the results can be everlasting.