Eve Di Potenza

What would the first sentence of your autobiography be?

My first memory is falling through the snow.

My first memory is falling through the snow. To my memory’s eye, we’d had a massive amount of snow that year. All the way up to my chest. However, when I recall looking at my chest, it was a fuzzy ducky yellow, and I know for a fact that I only wore that parka in my very first year. I was born in April and this would have been winter, so I’d have been just learning to walk and clearly the snow wasn’t that difficult to get through but for someone who had only been walking for a couple of months and was only a couple of feet tall, it was the most difficult and terrifying thing I had to go through in my whole 10 months of life. (My sister had gone on ahead to the neighbours and I had been left in that 5 foot stretch of endless white depth for so many seconds, I cannot keep track) At first I had been tip-toeing across a layer of ice that had formed neatly over the top and then whoosh! Down down down I went. We’ve all seen quicksand on TV before and clearly I had been caught in the Candian version. I screamed out in terror for someone to help me as I sank deeper and deeper to an untimely depth. It was going into my mouth and up my nose as I struggled for air. The more I struggled the deeper I went. I could not pull myself out. Everytime I tried to get up on top of the ice barrier where it was safe, it broke away to be crushed in the churning created by my little feet. I let out one final death wail. My sister turned around and screeched pointing, she valliantly leapt off the neighbour’s porch to grab my hand when suddenly I felt a massive hand grab the scruff of my neck and the voice of my father. “For Christ’s sake I told you to wait, now you both have snow all over you.” I had been saved and chastized for my impatience. This would turn out be running theme throughout my life.