Slow Going... 'Cooby Hole'

On the top of my grandparent's steps to the left, before the bathroom, was a small storage closet. Two stained, shutter-looking doors closed up the tiny space, set four feet off the floor, as the stairs up from the garage level laid out right underneath.

The 'cooby hole,' we called it, and I played in it all the time, as long as my grandmother cleaned out the things she had put at the front of the closet, her extra purses, spare towels, moth balls, and a tray of little containers full of cotton balls, Band Aids, and cue tips. The other things, in the back of the closet, I had to move and rearrange myself, as my grandmother couldn't reach all the way in and on the back shelves.

I felt safe at my grandparent's house as it was, but when I was in the cooby hole, I disappeared from the face of the earth. Nothing could get me. I pulled the light string and sat in the dark, peered through the slanted slots watching as my Aunt Nancie travel up and down the steps, my grandfather fetching something from his room at the end of the hall. Only my grandmother knew where I was hiding in silence. Sometimes she would bring me snacks or a sandwich, but never revealed my location if I wanted to remain hidden.

When I got tired, or usually just for the heck of it, I would lay across the middle shelf and try to fall asleep, the whole time wondering how much longer the bowing peice of wood under me would hold my weight.

Once I had enough of the tiny space, I pushed both doors open at once and revealed myself, more to the fresh, cool air than to anything else.