The Balloon Story

He sits all day in a tree, up which he has hauled a tank full of helium. He fills the balloons and he ties them off with meticulous care. One by one, he ties off the balloons and he lets them go. Day after day he ties off the balloons and, as he lets them go, he tries to remember why it was that he had first climbed the tree so many years ago. And why he was still up it.

He knew that he could never fill the sky. He hoped that he was not trying to fill the sky with balloons. He loved the sky just the way it was. One thing that he could not forget, as he grew older and older in that tree every evening, was that he loved the sky. He had wanted to be an astronaut, once. Nobody got closer to the sky than astronauts.

He has a slow rhythm. His thoughts swell gradually and he sits in the tree, wondering, as the balloons disappear. Time disappears too, as long as the light holds out, and one day is like another. He decides: I will remember what I meant by these balloons.

The decision changes nothing. Not outwardly. There is no childhood playground to revisit. There is no half-recalled carton gathering dust in an attic, waiting to jog his memory with its contents. And even if there had been a playground or a carton, they were not here. Here there is a tree. A tank. A sackful of ponderous balloons.