When ceilings cave in, what do I do?

There are writing days and not writing days, I realise as I sit with jazz playing on the phone and the sunshine dappled outside. The fragrance of mogra agarbattis waft through the house. That's got one more shade of yellow in a bathroom that was unused for many months.

I remember the shock of the evening, as I was preparing to drive home after a very meaningful workshop on culturally sensitive pedagogy in May. 22nd it was. As is my habit, I checked my cell phones to confirm that the kids were okay before I drove off to get home. What in the world is that, I startled, looked again at the photo that filled my 4S screen. Red, black blotched, and all over the bathtub, the ceiling had fallen into the bathtub. I was shocked and delighted that while this was OMG a huge expense, my son was not injured due to a delay at school. Else he would have been in the tub showering after school. And hurt. 

It was a very odd and sad night. Is the house falling apart, do we have to move, where shall I find the money to get this fixed? Many questions swirled through our minds and I am sure we said less to one other than we did to ourselves.

And now looking back, I wonder how those weeks were a metaphor for life at this time in my life. The ceiling came crashing down, there's debris everywhere. So what did we do?

We shut the door, turned on the exhaust regularly to let the mugginess reduce, we started using another space until this got sorted out. We did not sit at the door of that crashed-in washroom and weep, we did not moon over what now and what next. We just shut that door and waited for each day to work itself through. And it did. 

So now there's this matter of an incomplete form that has to be sent back that made me feel incompetent. I know now to brush off that feeling as someone else's judgement from an oppressive past that is not, over.

I shall just print that form, fill it out, sign it and fax it off to wherever it has to go. Before long, that matter too will be resolved. 

So that's all it is. Until the ceiling gets fixed, just shut the door and live one day at a time.

And think of the day when the skylight streams sunshine down.