Grandpa's Globe

         Ever since I was a little girl I remember looking up with awe and admiration at the yellowed globe that sat atop Grandpa's bookshelf. 

         "There are many places to go in this world," he would say, "and I've been to a lot of them." 

         He had, too.  Thumbing through his scrapbook of news clippings was like reading an atlas:  Machu Pichu, Mount Everest, the Canadian Rockies, Mount Shasta, Mount Hood, Mount McKinley...he'd seen them all.

         I was always so excited when he'd come home from one of his adventures with stories to tell.

         Mom was killed in a car accident when I was eight and Grandpa came home from abroad, giving up his mountain climbing adventures to care for me.  "I've been to the top of the world," he said every night after bedtime stories.  "But the place I liked the most is right here by your side."

         Grandpa and I had one last adventure when I was eighteen:  we climbed to the top of Pike's Peak, Colorado with the climbers who annually set off fireworks for the Fourth of July.  It wasn't until that trip I realized what Grandpa had given up for me.

         Going through his scrapbooked clippings and journal entries I often wonder how many more adventures he could have had if he didn't have me.  Longing to be close to him I took the globe from the shelf and was surprised to learn Grandpa's globe was really a box. 

         Inside were his favorite climbing gloves and remnants of rope, each labeled with the mountain he had climbed when he used it.  One particular segment of rope caught my eye.  Attached was a tag that read:  "July 4, 2004:  Pike's Peak, Colorado with Stacy:  the best trip of my life:  wouldn't have missed if for the world!"


299 words

Daily Flash Fiction Challenge Prompt:  write a story 300 words or less about a rope, gloves, and a globe.