Hiraeth: Draft:1
"You know Jill, the peach trees are still at the bottom of the river. Still at the bottom, the leaves just floating around."
"But...have you seen them?" I asked, questioning with all of my six year old wisdom.
"Of course not! They're thirty feet underwater; I can't go down there."
As I walked away from Byron Mundy, a family friend, I thought hard. Looking across the Susquehanna river at the mountains on the other side, I pondered what he had said.
I whipped around. "MOM!" I bellowed, running inside the minuscule cabin to look for her.
"What? What? What?" she emerged from the bathroom in her bathing suit, looking as relaxed as I had ever seen her. "What's wrong?"
"Mr. Mundy told me that Peach Bottom used to be a huge peach orchard! And..and then it all flooded! And he said that the peach trees are still at the bottom of the lake!"
A guffaw sounded behind me."It's a river, not a lake, stupid." I felt a slap to the back of my head and turned to see my eleven year old brother behind me.
"Shut up!" I yelled back, barreling into him as hard as I could, shoving him backwards.
"HEY!" my mom yelled, wrenching us apart from each other. "Get your life vests on, both of you. We're leaving in a few minutes."
"Yes!" I pumped my fist in the air.
Outside, the wind was brisk and the weather hot. I strapped myself into a dark purple life vest and looked over. My two older brothers and sister were doing the same.
"Alllllright everyone. Let's get going." Byron declared, heading down the steps to the boat docked. We all clambered in and I sat up front as I always did. The boat lurched forward and we were off, sailing through the calm greenish water. The wind was strong, beating the hair off of my face and making me squint my eyes.
Around five minutes later Byron stopped the boat. We were right smack in the middle of the river. Trailing behind the boat attached to a thick rope was something my siblings and I affectionately called a "skibob". It was a torpedo like tube that sat three people vertically and was pulled by the boat.
We did rock paper scissors. As always I drew the short end of the stick and had to sit on the front of the skibob. As the boat began to pull us I held on for dear life because Byron often thought it was funny to whip the boat around quickly and launch us off of the skibob.
We rode around for a while, barely pushing twenty miles per hour and then suddenly Byron "revved" the boat and we were off, skipping and sliding through the water. Water splashed into my face so much that I was blinded and before I knew what was happening I was sailing through the air sideways. The water slapped me in the face and I surfaced, making sure my siblings were okay. As the boat drew around to us my dad called, "Is everyone okay?"
"That was awesome!" I hollered back, slapping the water with both of my palms.