“Is there anything else you need, honey？” my dad asked  me as he put three twenty­dollar bills in my hand. I was traveling  back home from a family visit, and after treating me to breakfast  and filling my car with gas, it was obvious that my dad wanted  to make sure that I would be okay on the road.

    “No, Dad. You've done so much already. Thank you！” I was overwhelmed once again by his kind acts of providing  everything I needed, despite the fact I just turned 40. Yet I realize that in my father's eyes, I will always be his little girl. He takes deep pleasure in knowing his children are all right.  Now that he has enough money, he loves to give whenever he  sees a need.

    But this was not always the case.  Divorced from my mother when I was 11, my dad couldn't be around his kids as  often as he would have liked. Money was also tight; even weekend visits were rare. However, my dad stayed in constant  communication with us and made sure he was involved in our lives. Though he couldn't always be there in person, I knew  he was only a phone call away. I could always count on that.

    Even now, almost 30 years later, I treasure knowing that I can pick up the phone and call Dad, and he'll be there for me. I have a wonderful husband, but that hasn't changed how   Dad sees me. I'm still his child and he loves to see that my   needs are met.

    I remember a time when I was shopping in a hardware store(五金店)with Dad. I mentioned my plans to paint one wall in my house. Well, that's all it took for Dad to take   action. By the time I got to the checkout(结账) line, all the supplies I picked out were put out of my hands and placed with things he bought.

    Then there was the time when I took him with me to do some grocery shopping for just a few “ items”. By the time we  were finished, my shopping cart was full of groceries from  every shelf in the store! My sister and I joke that if you don't want Dad to buy it for you, avoid even mentioning you want something.

    As a little child, I was always plump（胖的）. In college I started blowing up. It got out of control when l went to law school.

    I'd made a decision a thousand times: I'm going to lose weight now. But what motivated（激发） me to get serious about it was turning 30.1 weighed 414 pounds.1 was always tired. Some of my family members have suffered from heart disease, and l was frightened. I also wanted to look better.

    So after my birthday, I walked into the office of a weight loss doctor.

    She was very understanding. Her focus was on balanced meals and she wanted me to exercise.

    Walking was all I could do at first. I started by walking a few blocks and gradually increased the distance, until one weekend, I heard myself saying, "Wow, this seems pretty easy." So I started to run.

    I was losing nine or ten pounds a month, and I had more energy. I started to think about the New York City Marathon. For years, I watched the runners and thought, "This looks like fun, but I could never do that." But now I realized that maybe I could. I joined the New York Road Runners. I ran a 10km, then a half marathon.I still wasn't confident I could run a full 26 miles. But I told myself I was going to do it, no matter what.

    By my 33rd birthday, I was down to 180 pounds. I started formally training for the marathon.

    And on the morning of November l, I stood on the Verrazano Bridge in Staten Island with more than 40,000 0ther runners, waiting for the event to start.

    It was unbelievable to have the audience cheering me on, handing me cups of water. And I crossed the finish line. My friends sprayed（向……喷射）me with beer, as if I'd won the Super Bowl.

    And at that moment, I knew: If I set my mind to something, nothing is impossible.

根据短文内容，选择最佳答案，并将选定答案的字母标号填在题前括号内。

    It is important to protect yourself from harmful rays. But if you think a high-factor sunscreen keeps you safe from harmful rays, you may be wrong. Research in this week's Nature shows that while factor 50 reduces the number of melanomas（黑瘤）and delays their occurrence, it can't prevent them. Melanomas are the most aggressive skin cancers. You have a higher risk if you have red or blond hair, fair skin, blue or green eyes, or sunburn easily, or if a close relative has had one. Melanomas are more common if you have periodic intense exposure to the sun. Other skin cancers are increasingly likely with long-term exposure.

    There is continuing debate as to how effective sunscreen is in reducing melanomas – the evidence is weaker than it is for preventing other types of skin cancer. A 2011 Australian study of 1,621 people found that people randomly selected to apply sunscreen daily had half the rate of melanomas of people who used cream as needed. A second study, comparing 1,167 people with melanomas to 1.101 who didn't have the cancer, found that using sunscreen routinely, alongside other protection such as hats, long sleeves or staying in the shade, did give some protection. This study said other forms of sun protection – no sunscreen – seemed most beneficial. The study relied on people remembering what they had done over each decade of their lives, so it's not entirely reliable. But it seems reasonable to think sunscreen gives people a false sense of security in the sun.

    Many people also don't use sunscreen properly applying insufficient amounts, failing to reapply after a couple of hours and staying in the sun too long. It is sunburn that is most worrying – recent research shows five episodes of sunburn in the teenage years increases the risk of all skin cancers.

    The good news is that a combination of sunscreen and covering up can reduce melanoma rates, as shown by Australian figures from their slip-slop-slap campaign. So if there is a heat wave this summer, it would be best for us, too, to slip on a shirt, use sunscreen and slap on a hat.

    Four days after Dad's 67th birthday, he had a heart attack. Luckily, he survived. But something inside him had died. His enthusiasm for life was gone. He refused to follow doctor's orders, and his sour attitude made everyone upset when they visit him. Dad was left alone.

    So I asked Dad to come to live with me on my small farm, hoping the fresh air would help him adjust. Within a week after he moved in, I regretted the invitation. He criticized everything I did. I became frustrated. Something had to be done.

    One day I read an article which said when given dogs, depressed patients would be better off. So I drove to the animal shelter that afternoon. As soon as I got there, a pointer's eyes caught my attention. They watched me calmly.

    A staff member said: “He got here two weeks ago and we've heard nothing. His time is up tomorrow.”

    I turned to the man in horror. “You mean you're going to kill him?”

    “Ma'am,” he said gently. “We don't have room for every unclaimed dog.”

    The staff member's calm brown eyes awaited my decision. “I'll take him,” I said.

    I drove home with the dog on the front seat beside me. I was helping it out of the car when Dad walked onto the front porch. “Look what I got you!” I said excitedly.

    Dad wrinkled his face. “I don't want it,” he muttered, turning back towards the house. Then, suddenly, the dog pulled free from my grasp. He sat down in front of my Dad.

    Dad's anger melted, and soon he was hugging the dog.

    This was the beginning of a warm friendship. Dad named the dog Cheyenne. Together they spent long hours walking down dusty lanes and relaxing on the banks of streams.

    Dad's bitterness faded, and he and Cheyenne went on to make many friends. Then, late one night two years later, I felt Cheyenne's cold nose burrowing(搜寻) through my bed covers. He had never before come into my bedroom at night. I ran into my father's room and found that he had passed away.

    Two days later, my shock and grief deepened when I discovered Cheyenne lying dead beside Dad's bed. As I buried him near their favorite stream, I silently thanked the dog for restoring Dad's peace of mind.

    Professor Smith recently persuaded 35 people, 23 of them women, to keep a diary of all their absent-minded actions for two weeks. When he came to analyze their embarrassing lapses(差错)in a scientific report, he was surprised to find that nearly all of them fell into a few groupings. Nor did the lapses appear to be entirely random(随机的).

    One of the women, for instance, on leaving her house for work one morning threw her dog her earrings and tried to fix a dog biscuit on her ear. "The explanation for this is that the brain is like a computer," explains the professor. "People program themselves to do certain activities regularly. It was the woman's custom every morning to throw her dog two biscuits and then put on her earrings. But somehow the action got reversed(颠倒的)in the program," About one in twenty of the incidents the volunteers reported were these "program assembly failures".

    Altogether the volunteers logged 433 unintentional actions that they found themselves doing—an average of twelve each. There appear to be peak periods in the day when we are at our zaniest (荒谬可笑的). These are two hours sometime between eight a.m. and noon, between four and six p.m. with a smaller peak between eight and ten p.m. "Among men the peak seems to be when a changeover in brain 'programs' occurs, as for instance between going to and from work." Women on average reported slightly more lapses—12.5 compared with 10.9 for men—maybe because they were more reliable reporters.

    An astonishing finding of the research is that the absent-minded activity is a risk of doing things in which we are skilled. Normally, you would expect that skill reduces the number of errors we make. But trying to avoid silly slips by concentrating more could make things a lot worse—even dangerous.

In our magazine's document room, from the June 1920 issue, I discovered a piece, What Editors Do, by Hazel Miller. What she talks about caught my eye: The first World War and its ending just two years before.

"During 1917 and 1918, when the World War was going, there was a huge demand for war material," Miller writes. "Most magazines were carrying practically nothing but war stories. When the War ended in November, 1918, some editors still had a goodly supply of war fiction and articles—for which they had paid real money—on their hands, which most people by now are fed up with."

Her words have stuck with me for the past 12 months as we've weighed which COVID-19 stories to run and which to hold. I'm writing these words with thick snow outside my window, but they will reach you in the green of spring. Will you be vaccinated(接种疫苗) and tired of reading about COVID-19 then?

We say writing is an art, and publishing is a business, but I worry we forget that publishing is also a gamble(赌博), Except for the immediate publication, everyone in the industry—agents, acquiring editors, magazine and journal editors, etc.—are betting on a story's success in a future we cannot see. As is the nature of fortune telling, we are not so sure we will not occasionally lose: The 1920 editors sitting on a store of war stories no one wants, for example.

With so many factors outside your control, and so much uncertainty in the industry, isn't it better to have stories written from the heart that you are truly enthusiastic about rather than some to please an ever-changing publishing market?

My future reader, it's my hope that this issue finds you this spring doing just that: Writing the stories you need to tell—and the ones that will delight your own future readers for years to come.