Near the end of summer on a Sunday afternoon in August, my life flipped upside down. We stayed at our lake house on Clear Lake in Indiana on a nice, sunny afternoon with a few boats in the water. Rolling off the water, the breeze had the typical grassy scent with a hint of dead fish. We go to the lake every weekend and ride on our boat, ski, tube, and swim. My uncle lives on another lake near ours, and on Sundays, he goes to a church on our lake. He drops in sometimes after church to visit with our family. My dad spent his childhood going to the lake house and had grown up on the glistening, blue water with his brother and sister. 

One weekend I wanted to go skiing, so we went down and gathered everything around. Since my uncle visited, my dad decided to ski since he trusted him to drive the boat. I tried to act like a nice daughter, and I let my dad go first. In my eyes, he stood as the best skier in the world. He started skiing at five-years-old, so I learned at five-years-old too. He blossomed at it and eventually accomplished starting on one ski before the age of fifteen. He could zoom back and forth, in and out of the wake at lightning speeds. Hopefully, I will master the skill one day like my dad. I have often dreamed of skiing together in tandem with my dad behind the boat. 

On that particular day, I felt excited to watch him ski, but they decided to fill the boat before I managed to jump on. I peered off the end of the dock with my mom ready to witness some magic. My eyes remained wide open to make sure I would not miss a single second. My mom always commented every time either one of us skied, “You popped right up like a piece of toast.” My dad always shot right up on his first try. This time, he did not. He did not pop up. Immediately, we knew that something horribly wrong had happened. ‘What’s wrong? He always pops up,’ I wondered in my head. 

Less than five seconds after he fell, my mom bounded down the dock, lept into the warm water, and swam out to retrieve him. He floated in the swim zone because we always start near there, unlike other people. Thankfully, he wore a life jacket like the law requires. Unable to move his legs, the life jacket held him afloat. My mom tightly gripped onto the back of his waxy life jacket and slowly reeled him into shore. Unable to touch the deep bottom, her short little legs kept managing to kick his legs as she swam. Every time she tapped him, he yelled, “Ow, my leg!” so loudly someone in Florida could’ve heard him. Once they reached the slippery ladder at the end of the dock, he said he could not climb out of the water. She pulled him in even further to the rocky shore. “Sprint to the house and grab a raft,” my mom demanded. I was a cheetah sprinting up the stairs. I brought the flimsy white raft down and gave it to her. By this time, my uncle came back with the boat and jumped in the water to help. They lifted him onto the fragile raft, but we still could not take him out. Then I overheard someone say, “Call an ambulance.” 

Immediately, I dashed like a bullet upstairs to our bedroom and plopped at the bottom of our big picture window. As I watched and cried, I felt so extremely overwhelmed. My eyes filled with tears and ran down my face like a river, and I shoved my brown zebra towel in my mouth to soften my crying. I really had never experienced anything quite similar to this before. I do not remember watching the EMTs pull him out of the water because I couldn’t watch anymore.

My mom eventually told me to gather our luggage around. Quickly, I started packing up everyone's food, clothes, and other luggage. I raced around the house, so I could go with my mom to follow the ambulance. They had to transport him to Fort Wayne because they knew from all the pain that he had torn something, and the small local hospital would just send him to Fort Wayne anyway. 

Once we arrived to the hospital, my mom called my aunt who lives in Fort Wayne to come and pick me up. She took me to Wendy’s to eat dinner, where I devoured my favorite crispy chicken nuggets. Then, we went to her library, so I could make a black, zebra striped IPod touch case on her 3D printer to distract myself. Eventually, my aunt took me back to the hospital when she knew everything had settled down. I saw my dad for a little while until my grandparents came to take me home. 

After the accident, the thrill of skiing changed for me. I did not ski the rest of that summer. Fortunately, the next summer, my dad coaxed me back out on the water. I love the sensation of gliding across the smooth water. However, at times I can feel a stretch in my leg muscles, and it frightens me. I know it did not happen to me, but I still fear of getting injured while skiing or wakeboarding. It impacted me as much as it impacted my dad. Since then, I have learned to never fear something that I love. If anyone loves something, nothing should stop them from it. I find so much joy in skiing, and I feel wonderful flying across the water again.