My Two Writing Teachers colleagues and I are hosting the 14th Annual March Slice of Life Story Challenge, in which teachers from around the world participate in posting a story per day.
Upstairs, two children shout at each other from various rooms in the house. Their voices mix together into one, never-ending stream of argument.
“Mommmmm! Bring! Me! Jackson-I-told-you-to-stay-out-of-my My! Water! Bottle! Pleeease! I’m-taking-yours-since-you-took-mine! Fine!”
The younger child’s voice, in particular, gets louder and increasingly urgent.
“Mom! I need you to help meeeeeee!”
A tired-looking woman (in her forties, messy hair, wearing sweats) is coming up the stairs, one step at a time. She pauses, seeming to gather her strength, before rounding the corner to her son’s bedroom.
Her son is angry about something his older sister said to him. “I’m so mad at her! I wish I didn’t have a sister!” he shouts.
The mom looks around his bedroom and then steps out into the hallway, hoping to find something to distract him, to cheer him up.
Looking out the window, the view of the mountain stops her in her tracks. The snow-capped mountain faces west, and the sunset reflects off the snow, causing the entire snow-covered peak to glow pink and orange against a deep vivid blue backdrop. It’s breathtakingly gorgeous.
“Jackson! Lily! Come look! Alpenglow!” she calls. She feels pure joy for a moment, seeing the mountain this way. She is sure this will make her kids happy. Alpenglow is right up there with rainbows and shooting stars. They’ll scamper to the nearest window and forget everything they were squabbling about, surely.
After a few seconds, she calls to her son again. “Jackson! Sweetie! Come see! It’s so beautiful!”
“Aaarrrgh!” he roars from behind his bedroom door, and after a thoughtful pause, says slowly and darkly, “I hate alpenglow.”
Mom looks out the window again, baffled. How can someone say they “hate” alpenglow?
“And there’s no such thing as love." he added.
And now, for the rest of her life, she will think of alpenglow connected with love and her son. And whenever there is alpenglow, she will think about the time he when he was seven years old and he said this funny thing in the heat of the moment, when alpenglow and the existence of love were so tightly and perfectly connected.