We first met Tom and Gee in the early days of our marriage. Jim and I worked full-time, and in the 1our garbage cans went out to the curb(路边), 2to wait the long, lonely 10 hours there until we returned to fetch them because we were busy. 3, we'd come home every garbage day to find them neatly4 in their spot next to our garage. We5who had done it for us, and then one day we6 him: an elderly man who lived across the street from us.
I baked cookies and we left them on the bench outside the garage with a thank-you 7. When we got home from work that day, a typed letter had 8the gift. The letter was from Tom and 9how he had come to walk the10on garbage day, returning cans for people he 11knew. Back when he was 12in the army, his young wife Gee had to live by herself. In those 13days, neighbors had taken the time to 14her garbage cans so she didn't have to. He never15 it, and now he paid it forward by doing it for all of us.
Over the next few years, we would 16Tom in their first-floor extra bedroom, where he spent his last days, still sharp and smiling.
We told Gee how17Tom had been to us, how we grieved(感到悲伤的) for his death and how18 we were to have known him. She wrote us back and told us she still talked to Tom every day. Sharing that 19our bond with her.
Tom and Gee, who opened up their hearts to us, made us realize that home doesn't20at a property line. It extends to all the people in the neighbourhood.
