The Day My Mother Fell Through the Ceiling

You know that one story from your childhood that no one ever seems to believe? Have you ever thought about maybe sharing it with people so that others can be entertained? I think that's just what I may do now. See, I came from a very strange family. My mother is Christian, my father is Buddhist with hardcore Christian parents, and I wound up Pagan--weird, right?

But none of that compares to the strange day when my mother fell through the ceiling.

When I was about 3 years old, we moved into a new house. It was a one story ranch house that looked more like a barn complete with unfinished basement and attic. After about two years, part of the basement was finished so that my sister could use the bedroom down there while I got her old room as my playroom. The playroom shared a wall with my parent's bedroom and, as a child who liked my privacy (as my sister was 10 years older than me), I liked to play with the door closed.

So one day I'm playing in the playroom, making my little toy lions chase down Barbie's horse and nom on it like the vicious creatures they are on Animal Planet, and all in all enjoying my little world when I hear the largest CRASH!BOOM you have ever heard in your life--unless you've heard a plane crash that is.

Suddenly, I hear my mom yelling for help and I rush out of the playroom thinking--in my infinite 5 year old wisdom--that I can become one of those awesome lions and save her with my mighty roar.

I think I may have watched too much Lion King.

I open the door to rush out and save my mother and am eye to eye with the largest dust bunny I have ever seen. I mean, I think the attic hadn't been cleaned since the house was built because this stuff was everywhere and about as tall at my 5 year old self. This slate gray, fluffiness of doom was the only thing that I could see that would make my mother yell for help, and it confused me. I didn't think for a moment that the giant dust bunny wasn't the source of the problem, so I whipped out my magic fairy wand and started to repeatedly bludgeon the stuff with it--pink sparkles and all.

I don't think it was until my father came running with my sister hot at his heels that I thought to look up. When I did I was in complete awe.

There was a leg coming out of the ceiling.

The scene from there went a little like this:

Mom's voice: "HELP!"

Dad: "Don't worry, dear, I'll help you!"

Me: "Whoa....." (*grabbing my sister's hand and tugging on it*) "Shannon.....is our house a monster?"

My sister: "No, you idiot, that's mom."

At that point, my eyes were as large as plates as I stared up out of the blackish fluff at the leg sticking out of the ceiling. I saw it wiggle when my mother yelled for help again and realized that my sister was telling the truth. However, it didn't cross my mind that my mother had been up in the attic and had fallen through, I seemed to think that the ceiling was somehow giving birth to a new version of my mother. That perhaps the ceiling was really an egg of some sort and that my mother needed to hatch out of it and that she would have awesome ceiling related super powers from this experience.

I was sorely disappointed, however, when I saw my dad pull the ladder down from the ceiling and go up into the attic to help my mother. As children, my sister and I were not allowed in the attic, but by looking up through the hole once my mother's leg was removed, we could see what was going on through a haze of blackish gray fluff.

Apparently, in the middle of spring cleaning, my mother thought it would be a good idea to move all of the Christmas stuff into the back of the attic, where there were no support beams or floorboards to walk on and support your weight.

Still today, I can walk into my parents bedroom and look up and the nice white square where the hole was and remember....I thought my ceiling was hatching my mother.