From my second grade on, there was one event I feared every year: the piano recital(独奏演唱会). A recital ___36__I had to practice a boring piece of music and perform before strangers. Each year I ___37__ask my father if I could skip the recital “just this once”. And each year he would shake his head, muttering(嘀咕) ____38_____about build self-confidence and working toward a ____39____.
So it was with really great___40___that I stood in church one recent Sunday, video camera in hand, and ___41___my 68-year-old father sweating in his shirt ___42___rising to play the piano in his very first recital.
My father had longed to play music since childhood, but his family was poor and couldn’t _____43____lessons. He could have gone on regretting it, ___44____too many of us do. But though he was rooted in his past, he wasn’t ___45_____there. When he retired three years ago, he ___46__ his church music director to take him as a student.
For a moment after my father sat down at the keyboard, he ___47___stared down at his fingers. Has he forgotten the ____48__? I worried, remembering those split seconds___49___ago when my mind would go blank and my fingers would ___50____. But then came the beautiful melody(旋律),from the ___51__fingers that once baited(装饵于) my fishing lines. And I___52___he had been doing what music teachers always stress:___53_____the music and pretend the others aren’t there.
“I’m ____54____of him for starting something new at his age,” I said to my son Jeff.
“Yeah, and doing it so___55____,” Jeff added.
With his first recital, my father taught me more about courage and determination than all the words he used those 30-plus years ago.