The Blue Balloon: A True Story

Tristan, my eight-year-old, squinted up at the sky as his blue balloon sailed far, far, into space. He couldn’t keep his eyes off it. He knew if he looked away even for a second, he might not be able to spot it again; and there was more at stake here than just a balloon.

It was the end-of-school celebration. Burgers sizzled and spat on smoky grills, bowls of potato salad weighted the outdoor tables, and kids lapped at their ice cream cones. Grass tickled their bare toes as they ran after their footballs and Frisbees. Soon the awards started, followed by the old favorite relay races: egg on a spoon, the wheelbarrow race, and tug-of-war. Grandmothers sat sunning in their canvas chairs, dads threw footballs with their kids, and moms served food and ran after the toddlers. Here and there great bouquets of helium balloons added a festive air to the picnic, and as the afternoon wound down, kids with their chocolate smeared faces, chose their favorite colored balloon to take home with them.

Tristan picked a blue balloon on a white cotton string and tied it to his wrist for safekeeping. When he came home at the end of the afternoon, he still had the balloon, tied to his wrist. I watched him rummage through the family handy drawer. (I called it the junk drawer as it was anything but handy most of the time. With five kids in the house, I was lucky if I could find a pen let alone the scissors.)

Tristan had just completed third grade and had learned his home address and phone number. His little features now had the determined look that this knowledge would now be put to the test. Grasping tightly to the black sharpie, he wrote his full name and address in careful print on a small square of scrap paper. Next, he covered his writing entirely with tape. (It’s amazing the family tape dispenser ever has tape in it, the way the kids abuse tape. Moms, since the beginning of time, have been telling kids, with no avail, not to use such big pieces of tape.) Finally, he fastened the paper with his name and address, sealed against weather to the end of the string tied to the balloon.

He rushed outside clutching the note, string, and blue balloon. He ran up the grassy hill behind our house and released it into the evening sky…

I fed and settled the baby, number five in line, while I watched intermittently out the window. It was always entertaining to watch the kids in their play. It often brought back my childhood with my seven brothers and sisters. No one could have ever accused us of being bored—we had each other, and for my kids, I hoped that they would be able to say the same. As the sun set, and dusk gently closed in, I called through the open window that it was time for baths, story, and bed.

That night I woke with the slam of a door as the wind rushed through the open windows. My three boys all slept in one room; open windows were a necessity for air quality. I tiptoed to their room after being up to nurse my youngest, only two months old, and propped their door open with a shoe. I had long forgotten the balloon, though, as I picked up a few loose garments strewn on the bedroom floor. I lingered at Tristan’s bed and noticed his smile as he dreamed, goodness knows what.

Tristan was always up to something. When he was barely one year old and sitting in a high chair, you could hardly turn your back, and he would squirm his skinny butt out from behind the tray, crawl over the tray, and down the table on all fours, leftovers from dinner, dishes, and silverware flying in all directions. If you were lucky, you caught him before he launched himself at the other end of the table. Tristan had no sense of fear or the concept of consequences. I don’t remember how many times my husband and I would be wakened with screams, only to find that once again, Tristan had fallen out of bed. And his bed even had a railing.

So as I stood and looked at his sweet face, peaceful and smiling, I chuckled thinking how angelic kids can be when they are asleep.

Thus the school year ended in a celebratory mood, and our family of seven—three boys and two girls, with both parents working as teachers, started the summer holidays. And no matter how intentional we tried to be about slowing down during the holidays, there was no way of stopping the earth's rotations. “No rest for the wicked, and the righteous don’t need it,” my husband would say.

Summer programs brought swim lessons, camp crafts, day trips, and camping. Our family also raised sheep—twenty ewes and lambs every spring, plus meat rabbits and a couple of horses. Cousins and friends flew in and out of the house like popcorn, and when fresh baked goods emerged from the oven, it was ants to a honey pot. Some days were just a blur of activity, fun, and adventure; other days when the mercury rose past the triple digits, a marathon of survival. I never could understand my mom’s warning, that before you know it, it’ll all be over.

So the blue balloon had sailed out of sight and mind by the next day.

About ten days later, the postcard arrived. On the front was a cranberry bog with a retriever dog bounding through the bright red, berry-laden bushes, a postcard from Cape Cod, hundreds of miles from where we lived. Postcards were rare even in those days, and it’s few kids that have ever received a card or postcard snail mail. It was addressed to Tristan, and he was as excited as a puppy with a bone.

I had to read it to him as it was written in the fancy, loopy cursive of someone from a different generation. When she had stepped out on her porch that morning after a night of strong wind, she had found Tristan’s deflated, blue balloon with a string attached; she had read the name and address, and written right back to let Tristan know of its astounding arrival.

So began our family’s relationship with our “balloon friend.” Tristan was not much of a writer, being eight years old, but I was fascinated with this weird coincidence, and this mystery person and I started a correspondence. Each exchange was like another tiny package of information, another little piece of a magical puzzle. Our friend was a sixty-eight-year-old grandmother. She lived on Cape Cod.

When I suggested we exchange phone numbers, she retreated and didn’t answer. So I went back to pen and paper, stamps and envelopes. Whenever she wrote, I answered. Whenever I wrote, she answered. I let her know when Tristan entered middle school and when he started high school, how he was doing on the basketball team, and finally when he graduated. Occasionally she sent him gifts, a bill cap, a book, or a T-shirt.

The balloon friend’s name was Helen Feher. As a family we talked so often about her, it was like she was our third grandmother even though we’d never met or even seen a picture of her. In fact, we all knew her address by heart, “Bonnie Butter Drive…” She described the signs of spring she had seen on the dunes, the birds migrating, the books she was reading. Once she wrote about an Easter bonfire she and her friends had made early in the morning on the beach to celebrate the resurrection day. And then, she started to tell us about her husband whom she was caring for. He was sick with cancer.

And then, she let us know that he had died.

Tristan had brought home some homemade candles he had made in craft class, so we packed those off in the mail to Bonnie Butter Drive. The next thing we knew, our balloon friend wrote to us describing how her husband had been cremated, his ashes set to sea at the place he loved so much on Cape Cod. At the ceremony, she told the story of the blue balloon and her balloon friend. She lit Tristan’s bobbly, homemade candles for the occasion and told how the gift of the balloon friend helped restore her faith in miracles. Through her balloon friend, she came to believe that there is no such thing as coincidences, only God incidents.

Her balloon friend helped her through the months of standing by her husband of many years as he traveled his last journey to the other world, the world where lost balloons, dreams, and stories all are made manifest, a place of lasting home, where all are welcomed, free of suffering.

Helen’s balloon friend was a Godsend in her life, but I wonder if Helen ever knew what a gift she, our balloon friend, was to our family. At first, it was postcards, but before long it was letters of several pages, telling of an extraordinary life, letters that gave our kids a mysterious window into another’s world. We never met in person, never talked on the phone, or even shared texts. Our only contact was always through letters, kids’ pictures, and an occasional gift. The blue balloon, however mundane, brought magic into our lives and reminded our family that once in a while, things happen for a reason.