The Gift

laozhang77

摘自2003年英语学习第七期中第二届“北外杯”中学生英文写作大赛的获奖作文。这篇文章是杭州外国语学校徐泗晟同学的文章。

When I was young, my mom always told me that I was the most precious gift she had ever received.

But I never knew why. I was too young to understand because I was at the age of not knowing why the 22 men in a soccer field tried hard to catch the ball, but quickly kicked it away as soon as someone got it.

I can imagine how excited my mom was when she first knew that she was pregnant. It was just like in a soccer match you scored for your team in a critical moment and you were about to win.

To my mom the gift is not free of charge. Several months after her first pregnancy, she miscarried. My mom‘s sadness was not relieveduntil she had me.

But to me, if my brother or sister survived, I would not be so lucky to have a chance to visit this beautiful world. So as you can see, I am the lucky one.

Because of this my mom always liked to tell me the story of my coming to this world, which had been repeated countless times.

Mom often told me how she suffered at that time, as she had to lie in bed all the time following the doctor‘s suggestion in order not to do harm to my health.

There is a saying: mother is the 24 hours a day and 7 days a week job in the world. I believed in it. My dark life ended on Mar.4th. Just before that my mother was faced with a decision of keeping herself or the baby and my mother chose me without hesitation, which meant she would use her own life as an exchange for me. Luckily we both survived. Otherwise I could never forgive myself. My coming was the beginning of my mother‘s job.

It was my mom who brought me to this world and it was her who brought me up...

My mom is a very ordinary woman. She was born in an ordinary family, and she hasan ordinary occupation. She is average as a person, as a woman, but absolutely not as a mother.

According to my mom, my heavy weight has something to do with my addiction to ice cream when I was a little child. Though I never acknowledged the truth of her statement, my mom insisted that I liked ice cream so much that I always cried for having some whenever I saw a refrigerator. She would be worried if I became fatter, but she felt very sorry that she couldn‘t buy me more ice cream as we were very poor at that time.

Once, she came to the kindergarden to pick me up. As usual, we came home by bus.On our way to the bus stop, I found a refrigerator, which stimulated my desire of having ice cream. I begged my mom for some.

My mom sighed. I uesd to think that ice cream was my present from God. And I was wondering why my mom was not as happy as I was whenever she passed the present to me. I was too young to understand the meaning of money to a housewife.

But she just sighed, and brought me my favorite kind without a single word of complaints. And I could not notice the embarrassment on my mother‘s face. Happily holding the gift from God I was as happy as a lark. My mom said: "Let‘s go home inanother ‘bus‘." This "bus" was my mother‘s back. Lying on my mother‘s warm and soft back, eating my present from God, I was singing all the way home. After that, my mother always said the bus was too crowded whenever I begged for ice cream on our way home, but as a matter of fact the bus wasn‘t so crowded most of the time. I didn‘t know until many years later that my mom spent the only coins for bus buying me the ice cream.

Now I‘m going to graduate from high school and my 18th birthday is just around the corner. I graddually understand the love of my mother. And I 誺e decided to send her a card as a gift on my special birthday to thank for all she has done for me. I know everything I have belongs to my mom except the feeling which is what I have for me.

I would tell her she is so special to me. Wherever I go she is in my heart. She is the most precious gift I have ever received.

Now I understand why people always prefer to use "mother" to describe the most important feelings. I understand that why there are so many songs praising mom. I understand more about the Chinese poem, which says every single thread of a traveling son‘s coat is mom‘s work and expectation. I understand further why we call our country "motherland."

Mom, I love you.