When it comes to paragraph 19, I find I still have some doubts. To my surprise, there are two tenses before and after the dash in the first sentence. Why the former is present tense and the latter is past tense? It is conflicting. In My View, the author used to announce that her poems were published. And now she recognizes her faults, so she doesn’t want to defend any more. I continue my reading; the phrase “the slightest bit shy” confuses me. I know “slight” means “small” and “bit” refers to “piece”. Why does the sentence have these two adjectives? The writer here applies two adjectives not one for what? What’s her purpose? I think maybe the author wants to put emphasis on the sentence. As a result, I think the sentence should be that I wasn’t shy or self-restrained at all. Afterwards, the word “exulting” puzzles me. I look up it [it up] in the dictionary; it means express great pleasure or happiness. However, I finally find it stands for acceptable showing off after reading the whole sentence. And what’s the relationship between exulting and show off? Exulting is a permissible form, so I think “exulting” is a derogatory term. On the contrast, “show off” is a commendatory term.
From paragraph 20 to 22 the author introduces three kinds of exulting which is nice for people. Turning to paragraph 20, I get a question: why the husband does a tap when he carries a fried egg? I think the husband considers that cooking for wife is a happy thing. He shows his love and labor to wife in this way. What’s more, the fried egg is great. Therefore, the husband is so satisfied with his work that he wants to show off. Of course, the show off is acceptable. So the writer describes her husband’s doing a tap dance.
In paragraph 22, I find there are a “what” and a “that” in the first sentence. I don’t know the reason why the author puts these two words together. I read it again and again. Eventually, I get it. “What” is “what has done”. “That” is “that mother of four” which can be instead of “the”.
