"I don’t like pear jam, you know…"

Goremykin Ilya, Secondary school s. Lisichansky Popasnyansky district of Luhansk region, grade 9

In the "One Day" essay competition, his work took 1st place.

"One day with the flavor of pear jam changed my life forever."

I don’t like pear jam, you know… I used to like it, but now I don’t! That’s nonsense, probably… But I just hate it!

Everything changed in 2014. Great mood. My summer holidays. I really deserved it to have some rest: I finally became an excellent pupil in the school year (for an “intermezzo” so to speak). Summer, July, insidious summer heat.

An incredible intoxicating and suffocating aroma of cherry trees and ripe wild pears scented around. ‘Well, the jam from these fruits will be just delicious in winter,’ I dreamed while sitting on a pear tree!

But with a premonition of something new and incomprehensible to me, my thoughts were abruptly interrupted by some terrible noise. My eyes, as if on someone’s order, were looking up at the sky, trying to find the source of that frightful sound. Here it was – the plane that frightened my young soul! A moment and a whistle, another one and an explosion! Contact made…

My whole short life flashed in my mind. I came to my senses, lying on the ground with my face up, under a crushed pear tree amid those fragrant fruits! I looked around and there was no one around me! It was strange… Such a blue sky without a single cloud and the sun was shining even brighter. My wrist watch showed 11:24.

Mum, where is my mum?! Suddenly it came to me that she was going to the store to buy some sugar. She wanted to stock up some of my favourite delicacy – pear jam – for the winter. I jumped up to my feet like crazy, trying to run. Thank God, that store was nearby, some 100 meters from our house.

Something was bothering me. It was sticky, unpleasant and fragrant at the same time. It restrained my movements. I looked closely – it was blood mixed with sweet fragrant pear juice. I tried to wipe it all with grass. I could not understand why our neighbour was lying in the middle of the street, as if sunbathing. Later, I’ll ask later…

Finally, I was near the store. Usually it was crowded, but at that moment there was almost no one. I saw two persons leaning over something or somebody. I didn’t understand. I moved closer with some caution. And there…

The scent of ripe pears distracted me again. It wrapped me around as if a serpent and did not let me breathe freely… My dearest person was lying there – my mum. A thin trickle of blood was flowing from her chest. I started screaming…

The saleswoman calmed me down; she gave me some water. Those 25 minutes of waiting for an ambulance seemed like an eternity to me. They came and took away the “injured” (why do they call my mum like that?!).

Life stopped... There was no one on the streets, no vehicles passing, because no one knew when the shelling would start again! I was not allowed to go inside the hospital.

Finally, a phone call rang… ‘A shell splinter pierced your mother’s lungs. We tried our best… But, I’m sorry,’ the doctor said too calmly and professionally.

I looked through the window, not understanding what was happening around and eventually what was actually happening to me. I saw the crushed pear tree with already fallen fruits. That damn scent seized my breathing.

I realized that I, just like those pears, was left alone under a split tree and with a broken destiny. Why me?! Who decided it?! And what will happen next?! Perhaps, if it had not been for that jam and sugar, everything would be different?

And by the way, my neighbour was not sunbathing, but like my mother, he was wounded by a shell splinter. He died just immediately (I learned about it at the funeral. The whole village gathered for the burial in between the shelling).

That was how one day with the aroma of pears and the taste of pear jam changed my life forever.

Seven years have passed. I have a new status (a disgusting one, in my view) – the status of a child who suffered from the armed conflict and hostilities, which gives me the right to a full-quality life. Things are getting better bit by bit, but I am still daunted by the scent of juicy ripe wild pears, bringing me back to the worst day of my childhood.

I don’t like pear jam…