Orange Sunday

21

When the plane begins to descend, all I see is white. The entire landscape is blanketed in snow. I almost cry at the beauty of it. Where I live now, it only snows in the highest mountains for a few months out of the year; I have missed this.

I catch an Uber just outside of the airport. As I ride into the country, I watch the green pass by. It is muted, buried under all the snow, but I know it is still there. The branches of evergreens sag with the weight of the snow, but they still manage to show off their beautiful colors.

The sky is gray, and even in the car the cold air bites at my skin. I have missed the frozen days here.

Almost an hour later I ask the driver to drop me off at the beginning of the driveway, even though it's barely twenty degrees out and the driveway is half a mile long. I walk down the dirt path, which has been churned to mud from vehicles driving over it in the snow, looking around me as I go. There is a line of trees on either side of the driveway, but beyond that, there isn't much. The property is surrounded by flat, uniform farmland; these are some of the only trees for miles around.

My father's house - the house I was raised in - is exactly as I remember it. Though nearly a decade has passed since I last saw it, it has not changed at all. The red roof peeks at me through its covering of snow. The windows are covered in a frost so thick, I can't make out anything inside. The left half of the porch still sags, and the part of the railing I broke when I ran into it with my bicycle is still not fixed.

That is typical of my dad; he never fixes things.

When I ring the doorbell, it makes the same chiming noise it has always made. When the door opens, I am suddenly sobbing.

His hair is the same color and texture as mine, wildly curly and an inconsistent blond color that ranges from white to brown. His nose is the same shape, though it may have gotten a bit bigger. When I last saw him, he had only a few stray whiskers on his chin; now, he has stubble all along his jawline.

I grab him, pulling him into a hug, and together we cry for everything we've lost, including each other.

"I missed you, I missed you so much," he sobs into my hair. His voice is deeper, and no longer cracks.

"I know baby, I know," I tell him, rubbing my hand in circles on his back. There are muscles there now that were not there before; he has grown stronger, a result of baling hay for a living.

My little brother is now eleven inches taller than me - an inch for every month since we were last together.