A Day I Will Never Forget Essay

In preparing this short talk I worked out that I had spent over 17,000 days on the planet, but this is the story of the one day I will never ever forget. It was mid-July and the sky just after dawn was that pale duck egg blue with not a single cloud in sight which promised a perfect Midwest day: by afternoon that pale blue would change to a deeper almost turquoise hue and the perfect weather matched my perfect mood. I had just graduated from high school, had a part-time job at the local A& P and on this particular Saturday I had plans which matched the weather in their perfection.
My father was celebrating his 50th birthday and that afternoon and evening, and we were having a huge family barbecue to celebrate: great uncles, great aunts, and uncles, and aunts, and cousins I'd not seen in years – they had arrived the night before and were sleeping all over our house, in tents in the garden, in sleeping bags in our summer house.
But that was not the main source of my joy on that perfect summer morning. That evening I was taking Tanya Eriksson to the county fair, and it was from a dream of Tania that I woke just after dawn to find the big brown imploring eyes of my English springer spaniel Zippy staring into mine. He didn't normally sleep with me but the chaos caused by the gathering of the family clan meant that the ordinary rules of daily life had been suspended for the weekend.
Without thinking, buoyed up by my glance outside at the sky and all the anticipated pleasure of the next 24 hours, I got straight out of bed, crept as quietly as I could through the sleeping house with Zippy in my wake full of purposefulness and energy – the kind of energy that you have when you know that you're taking Tania Eriksson to the county fair. In my eyes Tanya was the model, the zenith of female beauty: long red hair, piercing blue eyes, skin as pale as the moon, slim as a birch and with the most tantalising laugh of any woman I've ever known – before or since. Her face was often expressionless, but I could make her laugh, or at least I could in that perfect summer in the past. When she laughed, her eyes would light up, the soft skin around her eyes would wrinkle, the corners of her mouth would turn up, and I could only see a future in which my career, my vacation, my calling was to make Tanya laugh.
I went to the kitchen and quickly downed a cup of coffee, Zippy happily following my every move. I had already decided on perfect start to this perfect day. I took the keys to my mother's Nissan and strolled down the driveway. I was going swimming with Zippy in the irrigation canal just out of town on the other side. It's a funny sensation when you drive through your home town early in the morning when most people are asleep. I liked it. I drove past the houses of friends from high school, the houses of friends of my parents, houses of teachers who taught me: I thought of them all safely asleep security of their hands. Many of them of course I would see later that day – either at father's party or a county fair. As I passed the gas station, old Rick raised his right arm in a kind of informal salute to Zippy and me.
The canal was perfect for swimming: deep enough to dive into and with little danger from weeds and watery undergrowth, since it was routinely dredged and kept clean. I’d been fishing and swimming in this canal since I was 8. I guess I looked upon it as my canal – but then may be everyone in town did. Zippy, being Zippy, plunged headlong into the water, raising a stream of splash into the air. I dived in and front crawled to the other side in a burst of energy and joy. The water was cold, of course, but with my head and chest above the water the sun was already warm enough to make the swim invigorating and cleansing. It had the feel of a new baptism to match this perfect day.
I splashed water at Zippy who seemed simply happy to be alive. But then I became aware of something strange. At the edge of the canal my feet were half-balanced on the rough concrete blocks that had been sunk into the earth sides of the canal to prevent erosion, but I slowly became aware of something softer, something more malleable beneath my feet.
I pushed myself away from the bank to give myself room to dive down and investigate. I dove into the murky water, my hands groping downwards and touched – a human body. Using all my strength I hauled and heaved whoever it was to the surface.
And then my perfect day was annihilated as I found myself looking at Tanya’s long red hair, the pale refection of her skin and her lips now tainted by the faint blue of death.
I never made it to the county fair.