During the winter holiday, I experienced the heaviest storm in my hometown. It is the grandest but worst in my memory as well.
Two days before spring Festival, my mother took my cousins and me to visit my grandfather. The scene on the way attracted us. On the mountain, everywhere was ice and snow. What a beautiful scene! Growing up, I had never seen such beautiful snow. “Wonderful!” my youngest sister shouted and poked her head out the window. Then my elder cousin (the driver) joked, “You go to the mountain and play with the snow, we’ll pick you up on the way home, how’s that sound?” “Oh, no! If I did that, maybe I would become a snowman.” She curled her lips and her remarks got everybody laughing. In my hometown, snow is seldom seen. Looking at the ice crystals, big and long, hanging on the trees, I wanted to have a bite of them. What a masterpiece of nature! It makes us find the scenery pleasure to both the eye and the mind.
However, it was that very storm that brought great disaster to the farmer families. Generally speaking, before December on the Lunar Calendar, most orange orchards have a good harvest in my hometown. Nevertheless, this year, when spring Festival was coming, many orchards still held oranges on the trees. In mountain areas, many orange trees were chopped into pieces by the storm overnight. Fortunately, in the village that my old home belong to, trees were damaged only slightly. But many families still had not sold all their fruit, including my youngest aunt’s. Some families loaded oranges and went to other cities to sell them by themselves. Before Lantern Festival, my aunt’s husband went to Shanghai to sell oranges by himself. He came back after seven or eight days. During the time he was out, my aunt’s son, only five, always said to his mother, “Why doesn’t Dad come back, I miss him so much!” Hearing this, I was a bit grieved. No matter what happens, affection between family members cannot be crushed.
After the Lantern Festival my uncle came back safely. Though the money he got was not enough to cover the expenses, it was ok under such conditions. As long as the families are united, difficulty is temporary. Though it was the worst storm in my lifetime, we lost nothing important.
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