It was winter, and the holidays were right around the corner.  Winter was my favorite season, the twinkling lights, the joyful decoration, and the cold weather.  I was in the corner reading a book, when all of a sudden, it started to softly snow.  I had never seen snow fall from the sky before because I live near San Francisco.  I was staring at the snow as each flake twirled down, and landed on a road making a fresh blanket of snow covering the street.  I heard the doorknob rattle, and somebody shuffle for their keys,  I heard footsteps approach.

Then my dad came in and said, “Hey, how does it feel to have no school for two weeks.” 
“Good,” I replied with a dead face.
He said, “You want to celebrate by going to eat out tonight!” 
“Sure,” I said, ignoring him. 

My father was a short man with a few strands of black and gray hairs dangling off of his head, and he is always trying to plan things to make my family more open because we are all so closed in.  In our family nobody really showed emotion, of somebody, was going through a hard time we would just try to ignore it.  We never really said, “I love you,” very often, we all were really closed in, and showing emotion was a bit like a sign of weakness.  That moment my sister and mom walked in.  My mother was also short, with poofy black hair and light brown eyes, and my sister also had light brown eyes, but she had straight frizzy hair.  My dad asked them if they wanted to eat out tonight but they were too busy, like most of the time.  My father really cares about family, like how his parents did in India.  They were not always feeling the best, so my dad would call them every night.

That winter there was so much rain, every single day for almost two weeks there was rain.  I always loved rain, the chill in the air, how the rain would cascade across the concrete, and even as a child I remember playing in the rain with my grandparent lifting me up. My parents weren't so happy about it because they were the ones that had to drive in the hard-hitting rain.  While my mom was at work and my sister was at her high school, my dad worked from home so that I wouldn't have to be left home alone.  I was sitting at the window reading a book when I heard something hitting the window, over and over again, at one point I set my book down and realized that it was starting to hail.  The rain and hail were both hitting down hard, and that at one point, the power went out.  At that point, my dad wasn’t able to do his work on his laptop, and we could not get in contact with my mother or my sister.  My mother was stuck at her work, and my sister was stuck at her high school.

Later on, when the power barely came back on we went to go pick up my mother and my sister in the car.  We got in and the rain was hitting even harder on the highway.  I looked at the window and I saw the rain being forced by the wind, dancing over the glass. 

Then my sister got in the car and said, “Are you guys ok?”  We both replied with a simple nod. 

Then we glided over to my mother’s work, she asked, “is everybody safe?  Did anybody get hurt, we should really check the weather.

I replied saying, “Everyone is fine, but we are not able to get ahold of the correct whether.” 

We all arrived home relieved.  When I got home I realized that we had about 14 messages on the phone.  It was my grandmother who had called.  We had all just thought that she had heard about the storm, and we were about to call her back when at that moment the phone rang.

I answered saying, “Hi grandma, of you, are worried about the storm we are all ok.”  She didn't care about the storm, she told me to hand it to my dad.

My dad said, “Hello,” and then all of a sudden his face went from wide-eyed and happy to shock. 
I said, “Dad, what's wrong?”

He was staring at the floor, and I kept asking him until he said, “It’s you, grandfather, he was in a car accident.” 
“How,” I asked
“He was crossing the street and this reckless driver came and hit him!”

“Luckily another man saw him and took him to the hospital, he is in the E.R.”

Then all of us got our electronics and started to search for a last minute ticket to India.  When we finally got a ticket on a flight that leaves at 3:25 A.M, we all tried to go as fast as we could, with the packing, and the car coming to the front.  We finally got there, and while I was in the car the power went out.  Our family got there at 2:48AM, but when we got there all of the flight were either delayed or canceled because of the storm and its lightning.  I can see my father as he is walking from employee to employee as he tries to get on a flight.  The airport is filled with people because of the holidays, but even then I could see my father with his worries.

After about spending 13 hours in an airport my dad finally got a ticket to India, but he was still in the E.R.  When we were going home I felt like crying, but I don't.  I got to my room and I looked through old pictures of when my grandparents, and I broke down with tears falling off my face, but I was trying to be quite so that I wouldn't disturb my mom and my sister.  Just the thought of somebody being gone, never being able to spend time with them again was terrible, knowing that there are never going to answer your questions, knowing that they might not be right there to talk to was horrific.  A couple of days later my father called and told us that he finished all of his surgeries, and he is ok.