The Visit

THE VISIT Our son has flown west to visit his sister Left the steel-gray landscape of a snowy Thanksgiving in Upstate New York for the hazel brown mountains above the sunny Rio Grande in distant New Mexico There the capricious testosterone of his sister’s new man and their eight-year-old son orbit closely like moons around her shining bright energy, tugging at her moods that migrate like the weather, often raging like storms that are cyclonic and elliptical on the surface of her spirit in the shadows of her soul Special though they are our son is her brother, a primeval connection like interstellar light and for two and a half days he will circle my daughter like the rings around a planet, reflecting frequencies of light in the facets of his being, and embracing with his colors, make her radiant and pretty, a diamond in the sky, distinctive in the family of the sun