Booboo's Balloon

A little blonde boy who's almost two
Laughing as only a baby can,
Holding the string of a floating balloon,
He lets it slip from his little hand.

Too surprised to even cry
As it rises to the morning sun,
He points and shouts, "Goodbye, goodbye!"
Until the lovely thing is gone.

As a parent, you find yourself wanting to solve every problem, right any wrong, and always have Bandaids ready for the inevitable times your child bleeds. You are the hero, and you can fix anything. Until the day comes when you can't. Let me explain.

It was an early summer morning, and there were helium balloons floating inside the living room of our two bedroom apartment. The kids wanted to go outside and play, and naturally, they wanted to take their balloons with them.

Before I could get to Joseph to tie his balloon to his wrist, he was out the door with it. And as you can guess, it wasn't thirty seconds later that the balloon was on it's way South on a summer breeze.

He watched it go, then turned to me and said, "Mom, peez help!" He jumped as high as he could trying to catch it, and kept looking at me, expecting me to be able to reach up and pull it down out of the clouds. That moment, when he realized that I could not save his balloon, he started waving goodbye to it until it was out of sight.

I learned that day that I am not always going to be able to fix everything for my children. It's an earth shaking moment when a hero has no power! It's a helpless feeling, and a scary one, because my children are all going to make choices in life that have consequences I can't change. Those 'balloons', like innocence, or virtue, can never be recovered. There can only be regrets about their loss. The only power I have is the power to lovingly teach them how to live a clean, happy life. The rest is up to them.

On the flip side, my kids will ultimately have opportunities for excellence. They will choose good, happy things, and never regret those choices.

I have often thought of the 'balloons' that have been mine over the years. I've lost some things that were precious, but I've also held on to some, even though it was hard, and this trial and error has helped shape the way I live my life. And when my children are no longer children, they will see this too.