Ceilings (A Child's View of Tragedy)
Ten years and he's opened his morning eyes to see several different ceilings standing above his bed, in a snug house of 6 billion. The third in his life was finished with a maroon Mud Swirl, which had dripped onto his white nursery carpet the moment he saw outside his window to see the bomb explode in Oklahoma City. As just a toddler, he had witnessed 168 people vanish from his home. The next ceiling was light-blue with a comb texture. It wasn't the ceiling, however, that caught the attention of the four year old sitting beneath it. Instead, it was the new toy plane with the red 800 on its wing, attached to a thin wire, that hovered just above his bed in a circular fashion. The effect it had on the boy was calming, entrancing even, until one day the home shook and the plane dove toward the floor. As it lay shattered, absorbing into the still-white carpet, 230 more people were pulled from where he lived. The fifth ceiling the boy awoke to was painted a heavenly white splatter. The previous white carpet, stained with spilled Kool-Aid and paper cut blood, had been replaced with a brown wood paneling so the messes could blend in, and he finally had a big-kid bed! The boy, as he lay staring at the heaven above him, heard cries and moans coming from the kitchen downstairs. And in that moment, 39 of his brothers and sisters had left his home. Another ceiling appeared two years later. Colored silver with blue flecks scattered about, and with a Santa Fe finish, it reminded the boy that he was getting older. Having just entered the first grade, he was used to his mother coming upstairs to lecture him about talking in class and getting detention slips. But this time, the news was far worse. "13 more are gone," she whispered with a quivering voice. Almost four years had gone by, and the boy woke up to see his old ceiling, the one with the school colors, still there. Weird. "Hey, buddy. Wake up. You're coming to work with me today," his dad said from the cracked door. He was amazed at the sight of where his dad worked. It was enormous and glass and sitting in the center of the Big Apple. So when the boy stared at the plain, white ceiling on the 110th floor, he couldn't help but feel disappointed. "What are you thinking about?" his father asked. But before the boy could answer, a wave of smoke stretched over the ceiling above, followed by a loud CRASSHH! that revealed the morning sky. That day, 2,753 people, including himself, had vanished from the boy's snug house of 6 billion. And his room remained empty. And his ceiling remained unchanged.
