It was the first time I was noticing Grandpa's ceiling had something on it. Curved in different directions like a hidden map, roots, or whatever.
I didn't think of it as anything at first. Maybe it was just my imagination, I thought. But when I jokingly told Mama one night as I lay on the raffia mat with my junior brother, who was sweating and snoring loudly. And Mama lay on Grandpa's old spring bed.
"They're not roots or maps." Mama had replied. "They're Grandpa's dreams spread out in his ceiling. To remind him every day of what he had wanted to build for the house but kept postponing because life got in the way."
I sat up. “What kind of something?” I asked.
"He said the heat was too much for him and us. He wanted to build a cooling system for the whole house." Mama chuckled softly. "Every day, he will hurdle himself here and make plans about it. Your late Grandma always fought him to sleep but he didn't listen."
Immediately, the power went off for the third time that day. Mama turned on her camp torch. The heat from the zinc started pressing down into the house. I turned to see my little brother with rashes all over his body.
"This was why Grandpa had wanted to build the cooling system," I muttered.
The next day, I perched on a stool with my eyes lodged at the ceiling. I traced the tiny curves and patterns, trying to understand them. They were like codes repeated in different forms.
"Seems like you want to take over from your Grandpa with his weird plan. Come down from there." She yelled. I wasn't aware when she entered the room.
"Mama, this right here is a finished plan already. Grandpa left the plan."
Mama’s brows furrowed. “Plan kwa? Hah. That's a ceiling, not your textbook.”
I shook my head, Mama wouldn't understand, but I did. I was a student studying engineering, so it was easier for me to understand. I didn’t stop. I spent two nights piecing the marks. I searched online for anything that could resemble Grandpa's designs. I remembered my lecturer's words: Air moves where it finds freedom.
By the third day, I was already understanding Grandpa's designs. I told Mama about it but she countered me with;
“You want to break our ceiling?” Mama said, blinking fast.
“No... I want to finish what Grandpa started.”
I watched as she sat quietly for some time. Her eyes perched on the ceiling. Then she looked at me. "I'll have to tell your Uncle first. He's also an engineer and might help. Your Grandpa died with too many unfinished things."
A few days later, my Uncle arrived with some tools we might need, and when I explained Papa's idea to him, we set to work. Cutting through the ceiling, and installing vents to let in air even when there was no light. We made sure to strategically place them where there will be free movement of air. We worked day and night installing insulation boards over the ceiling and walls of the whole house. Mama made sure to make our meals while we worked.
A few weeks later, after a sunny day, I stepped into Grandpa’s old house with my Uncle, and the difference was clear. The air moved freely. The cool wind danced in and out. The walls didn't throw heat into the rooms anymore.
“Feels like heaven,” my little brother had whispered to me, spinning slowly with his arms wide.
Even Mama smiled when she saw me. “You're a genius.”
“No Mama, Grandpa is. I just listened to his whispers in the ceiling.”
Mama touched my cheeks playfully. “Then maybe... you’re the invention he prayed for.”
