The Swaying Ceiling
Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
Robert Frost
When my husband and I had been married about five years, we moved into a new and growing subdivision in Kearns. It was filled with young families. To remind ourselves what it was like to spend time with other grownups, we formed an informal group of parents who got together once a month, sans children, for good food and adult conversation. We only had two rules: 1. No lamentations about how close to insolvency we all were, and 2. No discussion whatsoever about potty training (it really dampens the appetite). Those were great evenings. We laughed, played games, ate pot-luck dinners, and, for a couple of hours, dropped the responsibilities of always being on-call Mom and Dad.
Once a year, it was our turn to host. A good deal of scrubbing, polishing, and cooking took place before our guests started arriving. After banishing our children to the downstairs with Daughter #1 in charge, we were enjoying a little pre-dinner visiting with these good friends, when I happened to look up. Out of the corner of my eye, something moved. I squinted. My ceiling appeared to be gently swaying with the breeze from our evaporative cooler. That’s not good, I remember thinking. Glancing surreptitiously around the room, none of our dozen or so guests seemed to have taken any interest in what was going on above their heads, but I was pretty sure that good hostesses didn’t let their ceilings ripple in gentle waves.
I leaned over and whispered in my husband’s ear. “Time to eat. Get everybody to the dining room. I’ll be right in to start serving.” He was halfway through one of his dad jokes, and because his stories were never brief, he ignored me and went right on. “Now!” I hissed and elbowed him as unobtrusively as I could, while still smiling and nodding to my guests. Startled, he gave me an exasperated look—he loved telling jokes—but he took the hint. He herded everyone in the direction of the dining room.
As soon as they were out of sight, I climbed up on the couch to get a closer look. There were little strands of what looked like string randomly drifting in the air. But what they were attached to made me stifle a nasty swear word: blobs of cotton. Each one exactly the size of a water-soaked tampon. I counted more than a dozen of them clinging precariously to the rough texture of my ceiling.
It didn’t take rocket science to guess exactly what must have happened. One or more little boys had discovered that if they soaked their older sister’s tampons in the sink (I shuttered when I considered it might have been easier to use the toilet water), they could spin them around their heads and slingshot the soggy tampons to the ceiling. Since I knew there had been a brand-new box of tampons under the bathroom sink, I was sure they’d had a great time, no doubt being careful to clean up those that had missed the target and landed on the floor. The ceiling tampons, on the other hand, were stuck way above where the little rascals could reach. Oh well, I’m sure they reasoned. They were white after all. Same color as the ceiling. Who’d notice?
Despite the best efforts of my husband and I, no one ever confessed. But it’s clear to me who the culprits were. My evidence? Several Christmases ago, Son #3 bought all his elementary school-aged nephews Nerf Guns. After dinner he, his brothers, and my son-in-law switched the family room ceiling fan to its highest speed and spent the afternoon teaching their sons how to lob the soft-nosed Nerf projectiles at the blades of the spinning fan. Nerf bullets ricocheted around the walls, careening into windows, the TV, bookshelves, the fireplace, the Christmas tree, and any humans who dared venture across the room. The guilty parties may be adults now, but they haven’t changed much. Any questions?