Goin’ to Heaven in a Red Balloon
Rachael watched the red
balloon fade into an Indigo sky. She watched her mother’s gray hair tangle in the breeze and the
old woman’s bony fingers grip the edge of the basket as she floated higher. While the balloon drifted upward, Rachael wondered what heaven
would look like when her mother got there.
Had it been ten years since
her dad died? She remembered the drab days of that winter and the weary nights sitting by his bedside. She often thought back on her childhood
and tried to only remember the good times, but growing up with parents like hers hadn’t been easy.
Wilson’s Heavenly Hot Air
Balloons. That’s what the sign in their front yard said. Dad ran the business in a little slice of desert behind their house. He had one
balloon, painted a dazzling red, and gave people rides into the mountains outside of Phoenix where they lived.
Once in awhile he’d take a rich client north to the rim of the Grand Canyon. He didn’t go out over the canyon because of the wind
currents.
“Get out there too far and
the wind would likely push you right on up into heaven,” he said. “Even the eagles don’t venture out over that hole most times.”
They lived in a nice house,
drove a nice car, and wore nice clothes. But she’d grown up a lonely girl. Not because her dad was gone for days and weeks at a time, but
because her mom was what the neighbors called certifiable. Except for the tourists that kept their business going, people stayed away.
Mostly, her mom was fun. Or
at least Rachael thought so when she was a kid. But once she crossed into those teenage years she began to feel differently.
“Where’s Hot Air Alice,”
the kids in school yelled in the halls. “Your dad made it to the moon yet?” the neighbors would chuckle as she walked by.
She sometimes pretended she
was like other kids—that her mom and dad were like everyone else. And sometimes she felt normal, then something would happen to put her right
back into the reality of her life. Like the time her mom walked into her room one morning wearing a wet suit and goggles.
“Let’s go snorkeling,” she
said.
Rachael rolled over and
tried to ignore her. “We live in the desert,” she said. “Where are we going to go snorkeling?”
“In the pool,” her mom
shouted. “Get up.”
“We don’t have a pool.”
“The city pool, goof,” her
mom said as she slapped another wet suit onto the bed. “You’ve got five minutes then this bus leaves the station.”
Her mom clomped out of the
room blowing air through the long tube that bounced next to her face like a blue bug antennae.
Rachael got dressed, pulled
herself into the back seat, and rode in silence to the city pool. She refused to get out of the car but watched her mom’s face as she waddled
backwards across the parking lot to the front entrance. She rolled up the windows when people started leaving because she couldn’t stand to
listen to them joke and laugh about crazy old Hot Air Alice snorkeling in the pool.
So, her momma’s death bed
request didn’t seem all that strange. After loading the balloon, the basket, and the gear into the trailer, she drove to the northern rim of
the canyon where the currents were strongest. After tying down the red ball of canvas, she lit the fires to fill it and rolled her mom’s
wheelchair to the rim.
“This was always the best
part,” her mom said as she watched the huge balloon take shape before her eyes. “I kept thinking it would get loose and make its way to heaven
before we could get in. I often told your father that when we get ready to die, this is how we should go. Save God the trouble of getting us
up there.”
After I helped mom into the
basket, I reached up and grabbed her hand. Her eyes had trouble focusing on me when I spoke.
“I know this is what you
want, but I still think it’s the craziest thing I’ve ever done. I can’t believe I let you talk me into it.”
“Now honey,” she said. “I’m
sure if you think hard enough you’ll remember some other things we done that make this look almost normal.”
She gave me a frail smile
then gripped my hand with a strength she hadn’t had in years. “This is best, Rachael. You don’t want to see me wither away in a nursing home,
do you?”
Something Mom told me at
Dad’s funeral rang in my ears. “Heaven is where he’s going,” she said.
“You gonna shed tears over something as wonderful as that?”
I swiped a tear away before
she could see it and checked the ropes one last time. “I think you’ll lose consciousness when you get high enough and the air gets thin. But
what if this old thing comes apart up there and you fall?”
“Your daddy won’t let that
happen,” she whispered. “Trust me, I know what I’m doing.”
Just before the balloon
disappeared inside a billowing white cloud, Rachael pulled out her binoculars and trained them on the basket swaying in the air draft over the
canyon. She worried about her mother falling out—something she hadn’t thought about until that moment. But what she saw put her mind to rest.
Her mom’s hair, now raven black, blew around her young face. Next to her in the basket stood Rachael’s dad, his shoulders square and
strong. He put his arm around his wife and they both turned their faces toward heaven. While the
balloon drifted upward, Rachel wondered what heaven would look like when her parent’s got there.
This was first
published in Voices Volume II