Climbing Everest (Short Story)

By Dan Leicht

She watched as he approached the step leading to the kitchen from the family room. To her it was never a thought, a quick raise of her foot and before she knew it the other was over too. For him though, at the age of two, it looked like Everest. He grabbed the top of the step and heaved one leg over before rolling his entire body onto the tiled kitchen floor. Once in the kitchen he began to run frantically around the house shouting in pure joy. To her it just looked like madness, but in his eyes he was hundreds of feet tall, leaping over his toy cars like a giant rampaging through a town. She picked him up and put him in his high chair at the table.

“Eat so you can grow big and strong,” she whispered from beside him. He never liked to eat anything other than popsicles. “Jack, please, you need to eat. Will you eat a little bit?” He smirked and shoved a handful of mashed potatoes into his mouth. He kept chewing it as if he’d grabbed a handful of gum instead. “Jack…” He smirked again and opened his mouth, the potatoes oozed out and back onto his plate. After an hour of eating his meal piece by piece she got him ready for bed.

The next morning he woke her up by screaming her name at the top of his lungs.

“Jen! Jen!”