This morning I had to traverse the narrow stairs of my tiny house in the first moments of waking, before my brain and my muscles began the daily dialogue that motivates me forward. I grasped the rail, reminding myself how far from California my son lives, cautioning myself that I had a full agenda for the day, with no scheduled time for catastrophic tumbles.
In my six years of tiny living, I have never fallen down those stairs, nor did I today. I swung myself around the open corner, tossed my electronic reader on the small cherry table, and moved toward the facilities for the need of which I had risen before the summons of my alarm. A few minutes later, I stood in front of the two-burner stove top waiting for the kettle to boil, lamenting the vacuous stare of my coffee canister, grumbling about having to re-use grounds because I forgot to replenish my supply of Double Dead beans.
As I waited, I glanced at those stairs. My friend Sheldon designed them, making their run a bit longer and their rise just a tad shorter. Various angel ornaments flank a mirror, hanging from nails unceremoniously hammered into the top plank of the rail. A long split spans the length of the baluster. I worry about that split from time to time. I assume it came from the careless insertion of a deck nail into green wood.
When I first designed my house, I had a sleeping cubby on the first floor. Several years ago, I had a friend tear that out to make way for a little sitting room. Now I climb that stairway not to sit at a desk and write, but to rest, to sleep, to read as night collects its dark self around me. The moon descends in the western window as the sun rises over my head. My house sits too far back on the lot to see the sunrise around the dwelling next to me, but I watch as the light rises in my small space at the head of those stairs.
The water boiled while my thoughts drifted. I poured the steaming liquid over yesterday’s filter and reminded myself to visit the coffee shop two doors down from our creative collective to buy beans. I settled in front of the digital NYT with my weak brew, at the foot of my stairway, in my 198 sq. ft. home below sea level next to the San Joaquin River. I contemplated my day. After a few minutes, I got up to scramble a couple of eggs and make some toast.
It’s the twenty-fourth day of the one-hundred and twenty-eighth month of My Year Without Complaining. Life continues.
