Wednesday, February 22, 2017
This afternoon, as I was leaving my apartment building, I saw a little boy, maybe four or five years old, with the viewfinder of a beat up digital camera held to his eye. He was alone at the base of our front stairs. I surprised him when I walked out the door. He stepped to the side, where I then saw his mother. She told me he liked my stairs. I told him to go right ahead and enjoy them, then I looked back at them myself. I’d never really paid much attention to them before. They are mostly terracotta tiles, with what appear to be hand-painted tiles showing on a stair face every so often. They’re a bit beat up, but still in fairly good shape for a building standing since the 1920s. It had been kind of a melancholy day up to this point, but this observant little boy changed my view. I know he helped me find this cloud. He might have also made the sun feel warmer, the air more brisk, and even had something to do with my climbing up and down this city's hills at a quicker clip than usual. Thanks, little guy, wherever you are. I hope when you are a man you are able to look back at those photos of our stairs and remember what today felt like.
