Little God

When I was young, one of my favorite spots was the middle of my basement stairs.

It wasn’t because the carpet — worn down over years by children’s running feet — was at all comfortable. It wasn’t because I could sit there and watch the TV, which was actually on the wall that I was staring away from.

Instead, it was this little sliver of space that had been left when the staircase was constructed between it and the ceiling. This space was so small that I had to hold my head perfectly still and close one eye in order to see it. I don’t really remember how I first noticed it, but quickly, I found a way to lie down on the steps so that my head rested in the perfect position to passively look through the narrow opening.

Looking in, I could see from the top of the fluorescent tube lights that hung from the middle of the basement to the wood above that served as the base off our living-room floor. The glow from the bulbs created this effect in that little space, like the sun coming into a bedroom window at sunrise. And that little insignificant spot would be filled with warmth in my mind.

It had this feeling of life to it, and I started to imagine little people in there, using the bar on the back of the lights as sketching tables or desks.

I would see them walk across the floor in the glow of that morning sun lost in some obsessive bit of work that has their attention so rapt that they never even sip their fresh cup of coffee or notice me watching through the crack in the wall.

In those moments, I felt like a sort of god or benevolent watcher. I was this silent witness to these seemingly mundane acts of existence that gave off more light and comfort to me than what I had been used to in the real world around me. And that thought continually pleased me.

And somewhere in the rapture of creating my own world and imagining the lives of my miniature mankind, I’d close my eyes, and peacefully, I slept.

A little god resting on the seventh step.