My parents have certainly had their troubles. They quarreled often, and a fight would inevitably （不可避免地） follow.
    It was my dad’s disease that began to change things.
    In 1998, my father, the always healthy, never-missed-a-day-of-work kind of dad, discovered he had kidney （肾脏） disease.
    The decision to go ahead with a transplant for my father was a long one, mostly because he had liver （肝脏）damage too. But Mom insisted on going further. She decided to donate a kidney to my father. She said she wasn’t scared, and it was the right thing to do.
    At last a date was chosen — November 11, 2003. At the hospital, all our relatives and friends gathered in the waiting room.
    The operation went well, and not long afterward, my sister and I were allowed to go in to visit. Dad was in a great deal of pain, but all he could talk about was Mom. Was she okay? How was she feeling? When the nurses rolled Mom in a wheelchair into a recovery room to visit Dad, both our parents were trying to talk to each other through tears. The nurses allowed us to present the diamond pendant（有垂饰的项链） to Mom, which Dad had bought and asked us to give to Mom after the operation. Everybody was crying, even the nurses. 
     My dad was having a hard time fighting back emotion, and suddenly my parents reached out to hold each other’s hands.