I have to fall in love with the girl that has never since a fresh patch of snow in her life, that's just me.
It falls past us turning the parking lot into a driving hazard but to her it's a winter wonderland the moment the first snowflake falls like a tear on her cheek (so this is show, it's much colder in person).
"Oh! It's just so wonderful."
The scene before me (little girl shining from her eyes as she tries to catch each snowflake on her pink tongue) melted away and soon I was staring at my own little face framed in snowflakes.
It was Sammy's first winter, he was save in mom's arms (where I reached out my hands to be in them too, a hint of jealously that every big brother feels every once in a while).
Watching the snow fall all around him, eyes wide as they took in this wonder, wrinkling his pink nose when a fleck of cold found it's way there.
"Mommy, is it my turn to hold Sammy? You even let auntie hold him and she almost dropped him. (daddy dived and caught him just in time, just like he was playing out one his favorite football plays)."
She couldn't even think up the words to discount the event that took place in the living room that very day, when every relative was playing pass the Sammy like he was a leather-bound football, she just placed him in my open arms.
This memory, so pure like the white snow that was covering every inch of her, was one of the ones that seemed to leave me along with all the good ones (all surrounding her, she was pure in my childish eyes) that were replaced with demons and spirits numbered off in my brain like a check list.
"Be careful Dean, I don't think he would like it if you dropped him on his head. He might even hold it against you when he grows up."
Like the first day he came the moment my hands touched him the cries died away, ('Mary I think we have are very own miracle, your going to be staying up later from now on, boy.') and I held him like Mom held her bible during church, together we watched the snow swirl around us.
"He'll never really grow up, Mommy. He'll always be my baby brother, even when he's fifty years old."
Her screams of joy pulled me out of my day dream (and the wet snow that she was throwing at my new leather jacket) and instead of my mother standing before me, Elle was there being the child that I lost too many winter's ago.
'That was a long time ago, too long. But Sammy's still my baby brother, even if he's a little dark around the edges.'
"Elle Bishop did you think that was a funny thing to do?"
"Oh yes, plus I wasn't going to have very much fun with you spacing out over there, dreaming of killing demons?"
"No, I was dreaming of getting you so very soaked that you never want to see another snowflake for the rest of your life."
"You wouldn't."
"Oh yes, I would."