A DIFFERENT OUTLOOK ON LIFE
One stormy autumn night when my nephew Roger was about 20 months old, I
wrapped him in a blanket and carried him to the beach in the rainy darkness. Out
there, big waves were thundering in, dimly seen white shapes that boomed and
shouted and threw great handfuls of froth at us. Together we laughed for pure joy -
he a baby meeting for the first time the wild tumult of the ocean, I with the salt of half
a lifetime of sea love in me. It was hardly a conventional way to entertain one so
young, I suppose, but now, with Roger a little past his fourth birthday, we are
continuing that sharing of adventures in the world of nature that we began in his
infancy - a sharing based on having fun together rather than on teaching. I have
made no conscious effort to name plants or animals or to explain to him, but have
just expressed my own pleasure in what we see, as I would with an older person. I
think the results have been good. We have let Roger share our enjoyment of things
people frequently deny children because they are inconvenient or because they
interfere with bedtime. We have searched the shore at night for ghost crabs, those
sand-coloured, fleet-legged beings rarely glimpsed in daytime, our flashlight piercing
the darkness with a yellow cone. We have sat in the dark living room before the
window to watch the full moon riding lower and lower toward the far shore of the bay,
setting all the water ablaze with silver flames. The memory of such scenes,
photographed by his child's mind, will mean more to him in manhood, we feel, than
the sleep he lost.
E X E R C I S E 1: Find words or phrases in the passage which mean the same as:
COLUMN A COLUMN B
a) warm covering, usually on a bed and often
made of wool
b) not clearly; without much light
c) make a loud, deep sound
d) mass of bubbles formed by mixing air with
liquid
e) great happiness and contentment
f) great deal of noise; disturbance; excitement
g) standard; accepted as normal
h) land along the edge of the sea
i) variety of a type of sea animal with a round
shell, five pairs of legs with claws on the front
pair; it often moves sideways
j) quick-moving; able to run very fast
k) light, powered by batteries, which is carried in
the hand
I) force a way into or through; make a hole in
m) shape with a circular base and smooth, curved
sides narrowing to a point
n) strongly on fire, or appearing to be; very bright
Dostları ilə paylaş: 
