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 smiles on their faces, childlike joy in their running feet and wonder and excitement in their eyes as 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.