walking on the ceiling

I was four years old, and lived at Route 2 Box 351B1, at the blue-gray house on Wilbur Avenue. It was built by David B. Simon, our dad. That's me in the picture,with the bandaid on my knee. I remember going through a lot of bandaids. I noticed that I don't look that much different today, really. Same hair, pretty much the same figure, too!

I remember an afternoon sometime before we moved in when Mom and Dad showed me two linoleum samples and let me pick which color I wanted in my bedroom....the pink, or the blue. I chose the blue, and shared a room with my younger sister Val.

That house holds many vivid memories for me. To this day I can tell you all of the floor coverings in that house: Mom and Dad's bedroom had a long, wispy lavender carpet, a kind I had never seen before, and never since. The living room (rarely used, as most "living" rooms are) proudly wore a sculptured royal blue. A greenish grooved linoleum (I remember scrubbing those grooves....) covered the floor of the dining room, kitchen, bathrooms, laundry room, office, and family room (whose floor was protected by an enormous, oval, green braided rug). The "little girls" bedroom had light blue linoleum, the "big girls" had pale pink. Then there were the stairs....striped, like Joseph's coat of many colors. Very unusual, and I have wondered why my seemingly conservative parents made that unconventional choice. We rarely walked down the stairs, but rather rode those stripey steps all the way down on our bums, over the years wearing down a path of sorts, to Mom's dismay.

Downstairs, we had the boys' room - once again...linoleum. The vast majority of the basement was plain, cold, cracked cement, and we called it "The Big Room"....a room we biked, rollerskated, and played a dangerous game of tag called "wet rag" in. We even put on plays down there and charged the neighborhood kids a quarter to watch. I loved our new house. As interesting as I found the floors, I found the ceiling just as intriguing.

If I wasn't out in the driveway pedaling my hand-me-down tricycle in circles with a cap gun in my hand, digging in the dirt hills or kicking the ant hills around our newly constructed home, or following a baby bird across the field in my nightgown at sun-up....you might find me lying on the rug on the family room floor, legs crossed, my hands clasped behind my head, gazing up at the ceiling...and in my mind, I would "walk" around the "room"..... on the ceiling. It was blank, white, vast, clean and uncluttered, except for an occasional light fixture, which stuck up like a traffic signal, defying gravity. I envied this interesting space they occupied. It was like another world, one I wanted to explore, one filled with all new possibilities and adventures. It was like turning the house upside down, and having a whole other, very different house to explore. And in my mind, that's what I would do....explore. Boldly going where no man has gone before.....(is that from Star Trek?)

You walk on the ceiling when you step into another person's life and see the world from their unique perspective, and come to a realization of why they are the way they are, and understand why they do what they do.

You walk on the ceiling when you push yourself to do something you never thought you'd have the courage to do....and a whole new wonderful world is opened up to you.

You walk on the ceiling when your whole life changes and you must discover a "new" life.

One by one our older three daughters have left home, and on August 26th Emily will follow suit. As I think about my life so far, it has been like my home on Wilbur Avenue.....colorful, varied, and full. The experiences I've had raising my children run the gamut of the ordinary "linoleum" day-to- day stuff, through the tender "wispy lavender" moments, to the fun and funny "striped" ones where we laughed until we were speechless and spent. I have loved my life as a mother, more than I can tell you. Not always easy, but I'd do it all again....and how I wish I could!

Though I know that my life will be turned upside down when we leave Emily at the dorms in August, and return to a home devoid of children, my hope is that I can "walk on the ceiling".... and even though it is bare, and different than the floor I am accustomed to, that I will have the wisdom and the courage to view it as I did the ceiling in my childhood home 45 years ago....as a new adventure. Definitely different, certainly new and a little frightening, but wonderful in it's own unique way, full of possibility and promise.

(But first, I'm going to be depressed and cry for a few days, if you don't mind).