Where’s the sky?

“Look mama, balloons! So many balloons! I can’t see the sky mama. I can’t see the sky mama!”

“But why are you crying, honey?”

“Because I can’t see the sky mama. The sky mama, I can’t see it. Please mama, the sky! Please, mama!”

The child kept crying and pointing at the sky. She kept pulling her mother, trying to somehow (anyhow) transfer her desperation and fear to her mother by pulling her hands and tugging her clothes. She kept asking her mother for help. Engulfed with despair, the mother didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t understand her child’s cry for help, she couldn’t see why not seeing the sky was like a life-and-death situation for her child.

“Mama, I beg you. Please, the sky’s almost gone. Do something, mama.”

“What can I do honey? I don’t know where the balloons are coming from!”

Slowly, there remains no sky, just balloons. Balloons everywhere!

“Mama…”- last cry for help.

The child sits down on the ground.

“Mama, shouldn’t I be happy to see balloons? I’m just a kid. Why is not being able to see the sky so scary to me mama? Why can’t I be happy like those kids?”

Both looked at the other kids following the balloons with a smile on their faces, childlike joy in their running feet, wonder and excitement in their eyes, while the mother and the child held each other’s hands with bewilderment and vulnerability.

Her mother replies, “Look at me! Don’t you see my helplessness?”

“I do mama. Do you want me to run after the balloons like the other kids? Would that make you a little less sad mama?”

“But what about you honey? What about what makes you happy?”

“Oh Mama, I think I have no hope at all. The sky, I can’t see the sky mama. I’m, scared! Not seeing the sky is scary mama. It shouldn’t be this way, right mama? Something’s wrong with me, right mama?”

The mother looks up, cheeks dampened, eyes questioning something or someone up there, while the child lets go of her hands and runs anyway.