Balloons

Once upon a time, I was in love. The boy was perfect- tall, intelligent, gentlemanly. The kind of man romance novels are made of. We spent Canada Day weekend together. When we went swimming, we spent hours telling each other things- favourite songs, favourite foods, what we’d like to do with our lives... Man oh man, did I have it bad for that boy. When he professed hatred for my sworn enemy, I thought I’d swoon right there.

As soon as I arrived back at home, I searched my house high and low for his favourite song- 99 Red Balloons. The closest I could find was my mom’s old cassette tape of 99 Luft Balloons. I stole away to my room and played it over and over again on my old silver ghettoblaster. 

We were going to get married to that song. For every child we would have, we’d celebrate by letting one-- heck, a whole bunch of red balloons into the air. Every anniversary of our life would be marked by red balloons drifting into the setting sun.

Unfortunately, like most romances between 10 year olds, our love was not to be. We drifted apart in junior high school, and I never fulfilled my balloon-studded dreams. 

Fast forward 10 years, and for my ‘unbirthday’ my lovely friends secretly filled my room with red balloons while I obliviously sang loudly and off key to Third Eye Blind in the basement. After much screeching and jumping up and down, I was left with the problem of what to do with a room full of balloons. While a lovely gesture, it is uniquely terrifying to wake up in the middle of the night smelling latex and seeing a shapeless mass floating above your head.

So I consulted Nena. Which really wasn’t much help. I do not live in a war zone, nor am I politically active (beyond telling the PC party that my Dad is dead whenever they phone for donations). So I meditated on balloons. What do they do best? (Besides pop suddenly and make you scream.)

Well, float. 

So maybe Nena was on the right track, for the chorus at least. With this in mind, tonight I went out to my backyard and let the balloons float away into the sunset.

It was beautiful.  

As they floated off, I thought about my hopes and dreams. Simple ones, like health and laughter, then more complicated ones like love and contentment. Then I thought about how damned cliché it was for me to be wishing on escapee balloons drifting into the sunset. I ought to be thinking about the birds I am potentially killing by feeding them lovely, tasty flat bits of rubber.

However, an hour later, a little voice inside me is giving me a green light to be a sentimental dumbass where red balloons are concerned. Perhaps it’s a little nostalgia for the balloon-full life I never had with that boy. Even more so, I suspect its for how well balloons and dreams go together. They need weight to stay on the ground, but they were never meant to be on the ground. They’re meant to be high above our heads. And yeah, sometimes they’ll hit power lines, or the pressure will be too much and they’ll pop. They might go places you never imagined. Occasionally, something will try to swallow them and end up choking.

But you have to let them fly that high, because that is where they belong. There’s nothing sadder than a little balloon hidden indoors, slowly losing air, day by day, until it becomes a wrinkled mass that falls to the floor. There’s nothing worse than a dream that has been shoved into a recess of your head, dying a little every day you keep it off your mind.  

It’s hard to remember that when you're busy living life, making ends meet, when taking the easy way out often feels like the only way out. But for tonight, anyways, I’m going to keep looking at the sky and remembering that the only way to keep my dreams is to let them drift up to the sky where they belong.