C

    Today is Children's Day. There is a show in the zoo. Many children are in the zoo. Look at the animals. They are so cute. The birds are flying and singing in the sky. The tigers are running. The pandas are climbing trees. They are good climbers. The kangaroos are jumping. Look at the mother elephant and the baby elephant. The mother elephant is eating bananas and the baby elephant is drinking water with its trunk. Look，what are those? They are two lions. They are playing with a ball. And the monkeys are swinging.

    When my first wartime Christmas came, I was in basic training in New Jersey and not sure if I would make it home for the holidays. Only on the afternoon of December 23 was the list of men who would have the three-day holiday posted. I was one of the lucky soldiers. It was Christmas Eve when I arrived home, and a little snow had fallen. Mother opened the front door. I could see beyond her, into the corner of the living room where the tree had always stood, there were lights, all colors, and ornaments (饰品) shining against the green of a pine.

    “Where did it come from?” I asked.

    “I asked the Gates boy to cut it,” my mother said. “I wouldn't have had one just for myself, but when in great need…such a rush! He just brought it in this afternoon.”

    The pine reached to the proper height, almost to the ceiling, and the Tree Top Crystal Star was in its place. A few green branches reached out a little awkwardly(难看) at the side, I thought, and there was a bit of bare trunk showing in the middle. But the tree filled the room with warm light and the whole house with the pleasant smell of Christmas.

    “It's not like the one you used to find,” my mother went on. “Yours were always in good shape. I suppose the Gates boy didn't know where to look for a better one. But I couldn't be fussy because he had tried his best.”

    “Don't worry,” I told her. “It's perfect.”

    It wasn't, of course, but at the moment I realized something for the first time: all Christmas trees are perfect.

    It was Saturday again. Grace and Karen disliked Saturdays. That was another thing the twins had in common. They shared the same clothes and tied their hair in the same manner. In fact, it was hard for their classmates and teachers to tell them apart sometimes.

    Unlike their classmates, they had to get up early every Saturday to prepare for their lessons. Grace had to attend the art lesson and Karen had to attend her ballet lesson. "How I wish I could do something different today," said the twins with one voice. All at once, an idea came to Grace and Karen at the same time. "How would you like to be me for a day?" they asked each other. It seemed like a wonderful plan to them. After giving each other a description of their own mends. Grace put on Karen's ballet dress while Karen put Grace's brushes and paints into her bag. Then they left for their classes.

    When the art lesson started, Karen was lost. Unlike Grace, Karen was poor at drawing. When the art lesson finally ended, Karen didn't dare to hand in her work.

    Meanwhile, Grace was struggling in the ballet class as well. As she had no idea about the dance steps, she had to follow her classmates blindly. As a result, she kept knocking into them. Their ballet teacher became impatient with her, "Karen, you should remember the basic steps. You can't rely on copying what others are doing."

    When Karen and Grace got home, they were tired out. They decided that they would never try to be someone else they were not. It seemed that the grass was not always greener on the other side.

    A few years ago, I worked at a church（教堂） and since my son was home schooling, he went with me to the church every day. Most mornings, we'd stop at a local convenience store, getting a chocolate drink for him and a cup of coffee for me.

    The clerk at the store we chose to visit refreshed our lives each day, and so we returned again and again. She had found her own way of enjoying life and her job. I'm not even sure that she was realizing that her energy put a smile on the face of each customer.

    When a customer brought cookies to the counter, any other clerk could have asked, "Would you like some milk with those cookies?" Instead, she inquired, "Would you like a lottery ticket（彩票） with those cookies? "

    She might have asked me if I wanted a donut with my coffee. But instead, she asked, "Would you like some batteries（电池） with that coffee?"

    Yes, life is what you make of it. This clerk's method of dealing with what some think is a boring job, and with the customers she met daily, made the hours in her day more enjoyable. In doing that, she also refreshed the lives of others and made them laugh.

    Sometimes, if my day at the church had been particularly tiring, we'd stop at that store before heading home. We'd giggle（咯咯笑）as we left the store, the clerk's words echoing（回响）behind us. "Would you like some shampoo with that soda?"