UNIT 7
DREAMS DO COME TRUE
PRE-READING TASK
2. What do you wish for? What do you dream about?
3. What would you do if you won the State Lottery?
4. Would you like to be a famous writer or a scientist? Why?
Read the passage.
My mother and I were dreamers. When
the days were soft and tender, we sat on the beach, digging our toes into the
hot sand. The big breakers came in slowly; their shoulders growing tall and
green. They crashed in thunderous white, and we would sit in silence, the
breeze scrubbing the hot sun from our faces.
She was 34; I was 10. She was
short, plump, a woman of fair skin and brownish hair. She was feminine and
prim.
I asked what she dreamed. Jenny
Tier Bishop laughed and ruffled my wet hair. “You,” she said, “are an
inquisitive little boy”.
“Yes, ma’ am,” I said.
She told me her dream. Someday,
when my father had a lot of money, he would buy diamond earrings for her. Not
big ones, of course. “See,” she said, pulling her ears, “these were pierced
when I was 15. Wouldn’t I look pretty with little diamonds?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “You sure
would”.
She asked me my dream. I said that
when I grew up, I would own a house right here at the beach. I would be able to
look at the ocean every day, in all of its moods. My house would have servants
who would have nothing to do but carry silver trays loaded with sweets and
chocolate bars.
She looked down at me, the bun of
hair loose on her neck. My mother laughed at my dream. “Little boy,” she
said-and I knew that I had lost her admiration. My feet came up out of the sand
and I ran at top speed to meet the big curling wave.
Her dream came true. My father gave her the
diamond earrings. They were tiny icebergs in big gold prongs. She sat before
the mirror, turning her head from side to side. My father paid a little a month
for those earrings for a long time. I was glad her dream came true. When they
dressed to go out, I told her how beautiful she looked. She wasn’t really
beautiful but she lifted her head like a queen when those earrings were
on.
Times became what my father called
“hard”. The earrings were gone a long time before I noticed. When I asked about
them, she smiled and cried at the same time, “Your father had to pawn them,
“she said. “He’ll get them back”.
Policemen were poorly paid in those
days and then the city cut their salaries further. My mother made our clothes
on a sewing machine. At night, she sewed rosettes on silk garters for a penny a
piece. Every year she paid the interest on the pawn ticket.
Then, one summer, she surrendered.
The payment was due but she ignored it. “Earrings”, she said, “are a form of
vanity we can’t afford”.
Great good luck sometimes touches a
person at least once. It touched me. A book I wrote became a best-seller in 16
countries. I bought a house on the beach. My dream had come true.
When the house was right, I invited
my mother and father to it. There were no servants carrying trays of candy. But
the house was on the same beach. My hair was grey, but the surf still thundered
with youth.
I handed the plushy box to my
mother, “Your time to dream”, I said. Her hand began to shake.
“John,” she said to my father,
“help me with this. I’m so clumsy.”
Dad opened the box and murmured,
“Jenny, they’re beautiful.” The earrings were screwed into place. “How do I
look?” she asked.
We said, “Beautiful.” She couldn’t
tell. She had been blind for years……
Adapted from
Dreams do come true by Jim Bishop
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