阅读理解I was ten years old when my mother died. Ten years old on that very day, my mother organized a party for me at the hospital. She made sure everyone there brought me presents.
Nurse Ms. Louise gave me a fountain pen. "Now you can write beautiful stories, Katie," She said. Then the twins in the same room gave me a pink diary. A little too cute for me. I mean, I read Stephen King, the novelist and wanted to write like him. There was one box they held out till the end. It was a large box, carefully wrapped (包裹) with exquisite paper and ribbons. "Who's it from?" I asked.
"It's you," Mama mouthed, hard breathing, but she smiled a very small smile at me. I read her lips. She meant it was a present for me.
"Of course, it is," I said happily.
I took off the paper carefully. It was a beautiful box made of heavy cardboard. Then I opened it slowly and...
"It's empty," I said. "Is this a joke?" I turned to ask Mama, but she was gone, no breath.
"Mama!" I cried. I screamed.
I cried steadily for a week at night, and for about a year, I stopped writing and reading. I felt empty and angry.
One night, I woke up remembering how she had said, "It's you." Not, "It's for you," just "It's you." Mama had been a writer herself. She didn't use words carelessly. But, why?
I took the box out and opened it. It was as empty as the day I had put it away.
"It's you," I whispered to the box. Suddenly I knew.
I was the box, solid and strong, maybe even beautiful on the outside. But I had to fill up the box to make it all it could be. I had to fill me up as well.
Then ____. The first thing I put on paper was about that birthday. I kept it in the box, and pretty soon that box was overflowing with stories. And poems. And memories.
And so was I.
