Narrative Essay

Julian miller

Composition I

Mr. Dilbeck

Narrative Essay

This experience taught me to cherish every moment you have with someone you love and never take them for granted, as the unexpected seems to always happen to the ones you care most about. It started off like any regular Sunday 6 years ago, I was sitting at the Westerville library waiting to start my weekly visit where I spend 4 hours with my father Raphael. When I finally spotted my dad’s jeep and strolled my way to the vehicle and pulled the handle…of course, locked. I looked inside the car and gestured for him to open the door and he smirks at me…..”C’mon dad, let’s not do this.” I mumble, he chuckles and unlocks the door. I open the door, hop onto the soft seat and notice that there were two fishing poles in the back. With a smirk I state, “So we going fishing again? We haven’t done this in like years” I said.

“Yea I know, I’ve missed fishing with u too Julian, ha--remember last time you almost fell off that hill into the lake hahahaha.

I retort, “Ha-ha it wouldn’t be so funny if I really did”.

He smirks and responds, “Your right, then I woulda got wet saving you hahahahah…you ready to get going then?”

I shook my head and laughed, “Whatever, yea lets go”. Raphael starts the car and drives off towards the lake. I stared out the window anticipating the experience, as fishing with my father was special thing we used to do all the time but recently had stopped due to family issues. When we had finally arrived at the lake, we pulled our chairs and equipment out of the car and carried them over to the soft dirt spot that overlooked the soon to be fished lake. The lingering smell of the lake brought back vivid memories of previous trips and gave me a warm nostalgic feeling. We unfolded our blue and green chairs and cracked open our big, smelly fishing kit. Raphael and I grabbed some bobbers, weights, and some purple fake worms that had hooks in them. We attached the items onto the pole and casted our first lines. I look over to my father and smirk, “10 bucks says I catch something on my first cast”

“HA! Yea right, I’m the only one who can do that. You can barely catch one at all” Raphael exclaims.

 “PLEASE! I seem to remember you not catching anything while I would catch like 5 fish then you’d get pissed about it”

“Yea well, that isn’t happening today” Raphael claims, he then casts his line out and proceeds to sit in his chair next me. We both realized that neither of us were going to be very lucky at all that day. He would cast his line as I would cast mine daring each other to catch something but to no avail. We passed the time by catching up and making small talk, something I had missed doing with my father and something I had enjoyed getting to do again. We spent an hour just talking and fishing and finally I got a tug on my line.

“Dad…I think I got a tug” I said, he looks over and focuses on my bobber, the fish bites again which causes us to notice the bobber pull down and twirl slightly. I stand up and reel in my line a little bit, the line has tension so I jerk my pole and hook the fish.

“Good job! Now reel that sucker in” Raphael exclaims, I start reeling and tugging on the tense line as excitement runs through me. I can see the line steering through the sun glistened water as the fish fights against me. The murky, dark blue water contained a soggy, molded tree trunk that was right in the lane of my line. My father warned, “Avoid that tree or it’ll break your line and you won’t be catching anything” I pull the line away from the trunk but I feel an even stronger tension on my line and knew something was wrong.  As sudden as the fish came, the fish was gone, the line snapped on an underwater branch and the tension from my line disappeared.

“Of course, just my luck” I say sullenly, I reel the rest of my line in and take a seat in my chair to fix it. My father looks down on me and shakes his head “well you almost had him” he murmurs. He sits next to me and assists me in fixing my red and black pole. We spent the last 3 hours after that just talking and casting out lines, though neither of us caught anything that day but we enjoyed ourselves nonetheless. At 4:45 my father and I packed up our equipment and jumped into his truck, he started it and I felt the rumble of the engine; he put the car in gear and drove off towards the library. We spent the ride reminiscing on old memories of our family and my starting of the 7^th grade. When we arrived at the library and he parked the car and smiled at me “did u have a good time?” he questioned

“Of course I did! Today was awesome, I enjoyed myself” I exclaimed

Raphael smirked and said “well great, I’m glad I could spend time with you, you better go to your mother now or she’ll start worrying” I open the door and hop out of the car.

 “Ha I know trust me, hey ill see ya later dad” I said

“Bye Julian, I’ll see you next week” Raphael answers. I shut his door and start to walk off towards my mother’s car, I look back to watch him drive away and smile. Sadly, that would be the last time I would see him as he would pass away months later in a hospital. This memory is very precious to me as this was the last moment I had with my father and a great last memory it was.