阅读理解。
Every year on my birthday since I was 11, a white gardenia(栀子花)was sent to my house. No
card ever came with it. Calls to the flower shop were not helpful at all. After some time I stopped
trying to find out the sender’s name and was just pleased with the beautiful white flower, in soft pink
paper.
I couldn’t stop imagining(想像)who the giver might be, though. Some of my happiest moments
were spent daydreaming about the sender. My mother encouraged these daydreams. She, d ask me
if I had been especially kind to someone. Perhaps it was one of my classmates. Perhaps it was the
old man. He lived across from the street. I’d sent him his mail during the winter. As a girl, though, I
had more fun imagining that it might be a boy that I had met.
A month before my high school graduation(毕业), my father died. I was so sad that I became
uninterested in my upcoming graduation dance, and I didn’t care whether I had a new dress or not.
My mother, in her won sadness, however, would not let me miss any of those things. She wanted her
children to feel loved. In fact, my mother wanted her children to see themselves much like the gardenia:
lovely, strong and perfect, with perhaps a bit of mystery(神秘).
When I was 22, I got married. My mother died ten years after I was married. That was the year
the gardenia stopped coming.
1. What can we infer(推断)from the passage?
A. The writer didn’t know who sent her the flower when she first received it.
B. The writer’s father died a month before she finished school.
C. The writer married at the age 22.
D. The gardenia means lovely, strong and perfect and a bit myserious.
2. The real sender of the white gardenia is______.
A. a boy the writer had met
B. the writer’s classmate
C. the old man living across the street
D. the writer’s mother
3. Which of the following would be the best title for the passage?
A. A Special Birthday
B. A Graduation Party
C. A mother’s Love
D. A Childhood Dream
