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It doesn’t matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.
——Anna Sexton
父亲是什么样的人并不重要，重要的是我心目中的父亲是什么样的人。
——安妮·塞克斯顿
“Dad,” I say one day,“let’s take a trip. Why don’t you fl and meet me?①”
My father had just retired afte 27 years as a manager for IBM. His job filled his day, his thought, his life. While he woke up and took;a warm shower, I screamed under a freezing waterfall in Peru. While he tied a tie and put on
the same Swiss watch, I rowed a boat across Lake of the Ozarks.
My father sees me driftin aimlessly, nothing to show for my 33 years but a passport full of funny stamps. He wants me to settle down, but now I want him to fin an adventure.
He agrees to travel with me through the national parks. We meet four weeks later in Rapid City.
“What is our firs stop?” asks my father.
“What time is it?”
“Still don’t have a watch?”
Less than an hour away is Mount Rushmore. As he stares up at the four Presidents carve d in granite（花岗岩）, his mouth and eyes open slowly, like those of a little boy.
“Unbelievable,” he says, “How was this done?”
A fil in the information center shows sculptor Gutzon Borglum devoted 14 years to the sculpture and then lef the fina touches to his son.
We stare up and I ask myself, “Would I ever devote my life to anything?”
No directions, no goals. I always used to hear those words in my father’s voice. Now I hear them in my own.
Th next day we’re at Yellowstone National Park, where we have a picnic.
“Did you ever travel with your dad?” I ask.
“Only once,” he says. “I never spoke much with my father. We loved each other—but never said it. Whatever he could give me, he gave.②”
Th last sentence—it’s probably the same thing I’d say about my father. And what I’d want my child to say about me.
In Glacier National Park, my father says, “I’ve never seen water so blue.” I have, in several places of the world, I can keep traveling, I realize—and maybe a regular job won’t be as dull as I feared.
Weeks afte our trip, I call my father.
“Th photos from the trip are wonderful,” he says. “We have got to take another trip like that sometime.”
I tell him I’ve decided to settle down, and I’m wearing a watch.
(449 words)
① Why don’t you fl and meet me? 不如你乘飞机过来和我见面吧！
fly vi. 乘飞机航行。Why don’t you...?句式用于提出意见或建议，相当于How/What about...?
② Whatever he could give me, he gave. 他把自己的一切都给了我，毫无保留。本句是倒装句，强调宾语 “Whatever he could give me”，以达到渲染父爱伟大的修辞效果。
1. We can learn from Paragraphs 2 and 3 that the father.
A. followed the fashion B. got bored with his job
C. was unhappy with the author’s life style D. liked the author’s collection of stamps
2. What does the author realize at Mount Rushmore?
A. His father is interested in sculpture.B. His father is as innocent as a little boy.
C. He should learn sculpture in the future.D. He should pursue a specifi aim in life.
3. From the Paragraph 15, we can see that the author.
A. wants his children to learn from their grandfather
B. comes to understand what parental love means
C. learns how to communicate with his father
D. hopes to give whatever he can to his father
4. What could be inferred about the author and his father from the end of the story?
A. Th call solves their disagreements.
B. Th Swiss watch has drawn them closer.
C. The decide to learn photography together.
D. The begin to change their attitudes to life.
5. What could be the best title for the passage?
A. Love Nature, Love Life B. A Son Lost in Adventure
C. A Journey with Dad D. Th Art of Travel
Use the words or phrases in their proper forms to complete the following sentences.
At the end of the story, the author told his father that he settled down and started wearing a watch. What will his father say? What will happen next? Use your imagination and continue writing the story.