A Perfect Day

When I was 15 years old my family moved from Juneau Alaska to Tucson Arizona. My dad left a week before my mom and me. He caught a ferry to Washington and drove one of our cars all the way to Arizona, then he caught a plane back and met my mom and I in Seattle in order to drive our other car down. While I went on this drive with my dad, my mom took my dad’s return flight to Arizona. Thus I got to spend 3 whole days alone with him. We had an outrageous amount of fun trying to keep ourselves occupied. We sang songs, enjoyed the scenery, read through an Anne McCafferey book, and had some pretty amazing conversations. It was a tough transition for me and my dad knew it. However, while these three days alone with my dad will live in my memory forever, they aren’t the perfect day I’m referring to in the title of this story. That day came the day before my dad left Juneau.

It was a surprisingly sunny and quite warm day considering that it was early March in Southeast Alaska. The snow still lightly dusted the ground and the mountains, yet the promise of spring and new life peaked through the white. My dad asked me what I wanted to do with him on our last day of living as a family in Juneau; his last day before he caught the ferry to Washington. With infinite possibilities before me, I asked him if we could just drive around and take pictures. So I grabbed my camera and a brand new roll of Kodak film and we drove. We drove to the glacier and took pictures, then we drove around the Valley, and Mendenhall Mall, past the Nugget mall and on down Glacier Highway.

It was one of the first times I can remember driving with my dad with no real purpose in mind. We drove to remember the life we had lived there, to mourn the home we would be leaving, to capture the beauty we knew we would never be able to forget. We were both at a loss to express the emotions we were feeling, and yet we didn’t have to. The journey we took in that small brief period of time, was really to cherish the blessings we had been given and prepare us for the unknown that was the future.

That day has lived a thousand days in my memory for it was an end and a beginning at the same time. It was loss and joy, love and sadness, peace and longing, beauty and fear. It was like standing on the edge of a canyon, marveling at the expanse. Unsure what the next step will bring. Will the earth crumble below your feet and laugh as you fall? Or will it protect you and guide you to safety? These were the questions in our hearts as we drove through a lifetime of memories... My lifetime.

I will forever remember that day because for me, symbolically, it was my last day in the place I had always called home and still probably always will. It represents the end of a time in my life where I had nothing to fear, nothing to lose, where nature brought joy to my heart and filled my life with meaning. It was the day I said good-bye to a piece of me that I am still waiting to find again. A piece of me that I catch glimpses of sometimes, as the green of the grass and the tips of the pine needles peaking through the snow that day. Sometimes when I am blessed to visit endless forests or see majestic mountains again, I feel the hole inside me refill just a little bit. But in my heart I know that I am still waiting. Waiting for a period in my life, that will answer the perfection of my first 15 years. A time that will permanently restore the piece of my heart which I said good-bye to on that perfect day ten years ago.



This picture is very similar to the photos I took that day. It's of the Mendenhall Glacier.