I was seven years old at the time. My parents had a work vacation that summer. And we decided the whole family would go to my dad's homeland for two weeks.
The nature in those places is unparalleled. Behind the village where my father was born, begins a wide meadow, through which, curving, runs a river with crystal clear water and a fast stream.
Next day after our arrival, we went out into the countryside at lunchtime, so we could see off the evening sunrise by the river and meet the morning sunrise by the river. Bright and sunny day. It was about two o'clock in the afternoon. It is hot. We drove up to the river.
Dad and mom on the shore set up a tent near the car. I decided to take a swim. I ran to a sandy beach and dove into the water. I swim over the bottom. A paddle, another paddle... The bottom was as clear as a palm. The water is as clear as a tear. I don't have enough air in my lungs, I have to swim up. Half a metre to the surface and I can't stand it, I take a breath underwater...
And my world view changes drastically...
I freeze and begin to sink gently to the bottom, carried by the current...
I see the rays of the sun making a beautiful refraction through the thickness of the water and illuminating the bottom, to which I am inexorably approaching.
A small flock of perch swims by a meter away from me, not paying any attention to me, as if I were my own.
Wow!!! I am thrilled and amazed! How beautiful it is all around me! The world has taken on rich colors. There is no fear!
There is peace of mind and a sense of inexpressible euphoria!
Suddenly I feel a dead grip on my hand and a sharp jerk that throws me to the surface, pulling me out of the Fabulous World I had just seen. It was Dad.
Seeing that I was swimming underwater in an unusual position for a swimmer, and realizing what was going on, Dad immediately rushed to save his son from the "net of Neptune".
I was on the shore... I took a breath on the surface and... The world sharply crumbled for me... My chest was torn by burning and pain. I'm coughing like crazy. I come to my senses... I look up...
The sun is shining. My parents are next to me. My mother was frightened, but my father looked at me and smiled.
I'll remember his next words for the rest of my life:
- You want to blow bubbles all by yourself, Ichthyander?!
After these words, my dad just burst out laughing!!!
I heard him laughing, and seeing his joyful face, I immediately calmed down, not even really knowing what happened ...
Next was a fishing trip, campfire and fish soup on the river bank in the evening twilight. My father reminisced about his childhood. His beaming smile and my mother's laughter.
Not a word was said about the incident of my daytime "bathing.
After a while, it dawned on me that I was drowning and my dad saved me. He was joking and laughing after my rescue on purpose, to calm me down and take away my fright...
After 17 years, my father went to his homeland alone and drowned in the same river, almost in the same place where he saved me... It was like fate itself was leading my father to that trip.
Three days before departure my mother had a dream.
It was like my dad was going on a trip, and my mom was trying her best to talk him out of it.
As hard as she tried, he left anyway, saying goodbye to my mother:
- I can't stay at home and they can't replace me with another person..
Before the trip, my mother told him her dream. My father's reaction was blurred into a frank smile.
Three days later he left for his homeland. Two days after he left, the phone rang. A neighbor from his hometown called:
- Come immediately! His clothes and passport were in his pocket, his shoes were on the river bank, and we couldn't find him.
We got ready in an instant and drove off. I drove with a heavy heart. Intuitively, I felt that my father was no longer alive. We found him quickly.
From the place where we found my father's body in the river to the beach where I "popped bubbles" in my distant childhood, it was no more than two hundred meters...
I still have the feeling that, years later, my father paid with his life for my saved life...
Give my father a deep bow for everything, and may he rest in heaven!
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