Not all balloons float

The difference between a moment of light and a life

We push through the crowds in Grand Central Terminal.

‘Go up the steps,’ I say, ‘you’ll get a better view.’

I follow, then we stand. I look up. Suspended on the ceiling there is a little red heart balloon. It has been carried, maybe even cherished for a while, then let go.

I sigh. Balloons, for me, are always a little complicated. Beautiful, but often sad. I always seem to find them stuck like this, or tangled in trees, struggling to get free.

After we take some photos we walk on and end up in a café overlooking Bryant Park. We are on London time, but in a city that never sleeps, nothing much is open.

We sit at a counter looking out of the window, at a homeless man searching for cigarette ends. We’re bleary-eyed with our drinks and second breakfast. The sun is high but the wind is cold, and every time someone opens the door we freeze.

It’s quiet. She looks at me and asks a question about her dad.

I am determined not to say a word. This is her trip, our trip. But she asks, so I tell her what was said in the counsellor’s office, the one who is supposed to help us do the end well. Then, unexpectedly, a song comes on. ‘Landslide’, the Fleetwood Mac version.

‘Don’t you like this song?’ she asks.

I can’t even read the lyrics without the tears rising.

‘Give me a moment,’ I say.

‘It’ll be okay, Mum.’

…can I handle the seasons of my life

I look out of the window. She looks at her phone. A few minutes pass. The light is beautiful. The homeless man zips more ends into his pocket.

‘I’m so sorry, darling. It’s fine to talk to me about how it feels.’

‘I’m okay really, but it is hard. I’m losing a family.’

This hurts in a way I can’t describe. I grew up without much family, so from the earliest I can remember it was something I dreamed of. It seemed so simple.

‘It’s all I ever wanted. For you, for me.’

…can I sail through the changing ocean tides

I tell her about another moment with the counsellor. A moment of something else. Light, or something deeper.

The office is really a room in her house. We were there last week. The fire is alight and she adds a log, while he swipes at his tears and looks away. I watch, a little detached.

‘You’re feeling an emotion now. Can you tell me what it is?’

He sighs. He doesn’t make eye contact with either of us.

‘I don’t know. Frustration. Sadness.’

He needs a minute. He looks down at an invisible spot on the sofa between us. Then I watch the gold creep, like sunrise across his folded face. It’s beautiful. He is beautiful. He feels older, bigger. The log smoke, the wisp of warm red wine, the depth of emotion I have been trying to reach.

A crack. An opening in this breakage.

But he screws his face tighter and tighter until he is able to shake it off.

‘I feel maybe there is a fear of coming towards her,’ the counsellor says.

‘I’m afraid of a lifetime of unprocessed things coming at once. Of being a mess.’

I don’t wait for her to speak again.

‘I wanted someone willing to be a mess for me. To give everything as I did.’

By the time we say goodbye at the front door, there is no trace of light left. It has all been sighed away and shaken off.

I look out at the park, the light through the window.

I remember the other light, another balloon.

The light that arises in moments of rupture is so specific. It has a certain tone, falls in a certain way.

It was another time, another man. The end of a party, the last pretence we kept up before I was to leave. I moved around collecting the empty shells of balloons, stretching half-deflated ones until they popped. Muffled fireworks.

Then we sat, staring at the still garden. Silently. That’s when I saw it. The blue-swirled clouds reflected in his tears, full of sunlight. He had a light in his eyes I’d never seen before.

A hot air balloon drifted over the roof of the house. I pointed at it.

‘Not all balloons float,’ he said.

The light passed. I didn’t reply because I knew I had already jumped before our balloon got too high.

The café door swings open again. I shiver.

I look at my daughter.

‘I think I need more. More depth. Is that selfish? I don’t know if he has it.’

She looks at me.

‘I think everyone has depth. They just don’t always express it the same.’

Your children are wiser than you.

I wonder if I am a bad person, addicted to hunting light, or living only in this place of potential. I read things sideways, dig around on fault lines that might later become cracks full of beautiful light. And beauty is everywhere. An impossible ache that never ends.

I know, from my life, that you’re not supposed to close the crack. The light comes through it. You don’t run from the tears, you gather them, because they reflect the world, the thoughts of your soul. To feel everything with the volume turned up is the cost, but if you close the crack you don’t only close the grief, you shut out the light too.

I think about the balloon on the ceiling. Carried for a while, then let go.

This is another season of my life. I don’t know if I can handle it.

But the light.

It is beautiful.