专题05 阅读理解之记叙文（江苏名校期中真题）-2023-2024学年高二英语下学期期中复习查缺补漏冲刺满分（译林版2020）

阅读理解之记叙文 (名校期中真题) （22-23高二下·江苏南京·期中）My dad is a car mechanic, which involves lots of heavy lifting, tightening, shaking, and banging. He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would bake great bread, but he is and he does. The shop where Dad works is not equipped with enough workers, so there’s lots of pressure on Dad. I’ve been feeling kind of stressed out myself since I found out I didn’t qualify for the swim team. Now I’ll have to wait a whole year to try out again; that might as well be a million years. Dad knew I was feeling pressure. Last Saturday he said it was time for me to help in the kitchen. I couldn’t imagine what help I could offer. Still, I followed right behind him. Dad gave me an apron, got out his enormous stainless-steel mixing bowl, and told me to stir while he added the ingredients. When I had stirred the flour and milk mixture into a thick lump (块), Dad had me turn it over onto the countertop. Then he showed me how to knead (揉) the dough (生面团), which took ten minutes and a surprising amount of energy. Next came the most difficult and surprising part — doing nothing. We waited for more than an hour for the dough to slowly swell up and double in size. After that, we punched the risen dough down to let the air out, divided it in two and waited for another hour. “It’s hard to resist putting the dough directly into the oven, but if you do, the bread will be tough. The most important lesson of all is learning to be patient,” Dad explained. While we waited, we sat and talked. Silence is a blank space that begs to be filled. It’s like the dough — it swells up and fills a room with emptiness unless you punch it down with words. It felt good to be still and listen to each other. As the flour dust in the kitchen quietly settled, time seemed to slow down. The dough was going to rise at its own pace. As I accepted that, I stopped watching the clock and drumming my fingers on the tabletop. I started enjoying the quiet time with Dad. My father taught me how