Textured Ceilings

She tossed the pen across the textbook that occupied her time the entire morning, rolled onto her back and slowly exhaled wondering who the hell thought of textured ceilings. She briefly pondered what circumstances made that popular in the American seventies…and why were the windows so long? With eyes lightly closed and arms spread into corpse pose, her thoughts drifted to the ballet slipper walls on fuchsia carpet on taffy ceiling fan when they moved in twelve years ago. She was just a kid then, positioned perfectly between child and adulthood; although dramatic irony saw life’s foot creeping it’s way to the right side of that scale.

She was funny. Sensitive. And kind hearted. Then and prior to the scale tipping event. She often thought about human resilience and personality…evolution, Bandura and Cattell.

Why would someone take all that time to texture a ceiling? She wondered if couples toured the new home in 1974 and said, “Honey, this is the one…would you just look at the swirls on the ceiling!”.

Twelve years ago they moved in and started  a new life. She breathed in deeply, further spreading her arms out onto the now brown carpet, almost able to smell Sun Ripened Raspberry lotion floating through the air. She twitched her mouth into a half smile as she touched her neck recalling the importance of roll on glitter and the correct method of application in 1999.

She squinted her eyes as the sun shown through the long windows into a now green room with almost none of her belongings in it. Tilting her head back she threw her arms down and heaved her petite body into a standing position. She gazed out the widow to the street she grew up on. Everything about the house and it’s character had changed, she may have changed too.

The mystifying ceilings? Those stayed the same.