I stared into the direction of the lost balloon...
and decided to call it quits
I stepped out of the car and strapped Kai into the baby carrier. At six months old, he wasn’t sitting up well enough to ride in a shopping cart. It was Jim’s birthday, October 2022, and I needed to pick up a few things for the birthday celebration later that night.
I grabbed a HAPPY BIRTHDAY! balloon because it was festive, but also because when you have kids can you really throw a birthday celebration without balloons? I grabbed a pint of buttermilk, a bag of cane sugar, and a bunch of ripe, red-taped bananas for the homemade banana cake I was going to make for Jim. I grabbed butter and powdered sugar for a homemade chocolate buttercream frosting, and lastly, I grabbed a tub of extra creamy vanilla ice cream.
The lines were long and moving at a glacial pace. I was fourth in one of two available checkout lines, besides the self check out, which I definitely wasn’t in the mood for, especially with the extra weight and obstruction of a baby strapped to my chest. As I waited, all I could think about was the ice cream. Surely the ice cream was beginning to melt.
I’m realizing that I get stressed when I buy frozen things, particularly when it comes to things that can melt, and not just thaw. Ice cream, for example, is much higher stakes than a bag of frozen peas. The race to transition the ice cream from freezer to freezer before it melts gives me anxiety. This is when I text Jim that I’m having a hard day. I’m standing in line with twenty added pounds strapped to my chest, my ice cream is melting, and I’m tired. I’m overwhelmed. It’s been a day, and it’s only 9:30am. After I hit send, I briefly wonder, AITA for bitching about my day on my husband’s birthday?
Ten or fifteen minutes later, when it was finally my turn to check out, I punched in my ALT ID, chose paper over plastic, and endured the usual onslaught of questions about my baby. How old is he? What’s his name? The usual comments about his smile, how cute he is, how beautiful his blue eyes are, and, unfortunately, the far-too-common and utterly disturbing comments that sexualize my infant: “Oh, he’s such a flirt,” or “He’s going to be a real heartbreaker when he’s older.”
Can we please not do this? Sexualize a 6-month-old? If my baby is smiling, it’s because he’s happy. If he turns his head away and averts his gaze, it’s because he’s shy. Flirting implies that he’s knowingly trying to coerce you, the powerless victim of his charms, to do something you otherwise wouldn’t have done. Please. He’s a f*cking baby. Can we all just agree how ridiculous that is and stop sexualizing babies? Great.
Surely the ice cream was melting now. The container was beaded with condensation as the bagger lowered it into the brown sack.
It was a rainy, gloomy, gusty day. No doubt the weather was contributing to my depression, which felt particularly heavy and unmanageable that day. The sliding doors opened as I pushed my shopping cart through them and whoosh—a wild gust of wind whipped the balloon out of my cart and send it soaring up into the air.
I hadn’t thought to secure the balloon to the cart or hold it with my hands because in the store it had been weighted down with a plastic clip, but given the altered state of my cognitive ability—thank you sleep deprivation—I didn’t put 2 and 2 together.
I veered right with gusto, yanking my shopping cart with me, and momentarily forgetting about my sluggishness, as I began to power walk across the parking lot. My mood shifted; I was focused and committed; something inside me needed that balloon. I chased it past the shopping cart return, past the True Value hardware store, and The Maytag Store, about 100 yards away.
The balloon toggled wildly in the wind. It thrust violently forward, the weighted clip thrashing on the end of the long red string. It moved in this pattern—a violent surge forward and a slow vertical bobble that flaunted the potential of snagging it and increased my pace to a light jog, which, let’s be honest, likely resembled a rapid waddle. Kai’s legs were flailing on top of mine, his little feet kicking my thighs with every step. The balloon kept moving—the surge, the bobble, the surge, the bobble—mimicking a distressed buoy in choppy waters.
It was a spectacle. An elderly woman paused to look up with concern before continuing to load her groceries into her car. Outside of Hungry Howie’s, I chased the balloon toward an oncoming truck. The balloon bumped into the truck’s front windshield. The man hopped out of his truck and saw the balloon, saw me running toward it, and for a brief moment, I could tell he wanted to help me—this crazy woman pushing her shopping cart across a wet parking lot with a baby strapped to her chest—but he didn’t. The next gust of wind sent the balloon a sharp left, away from the UPS Store and toward the Kroger Fuel Center, and the man retreated into the driver’s seat of his truck, resigned.
At this point, I too was fairly convinced that I wasn’t going to get the balloon, but I wasn’t ready to give up just yet, so I slowed to a walk and kept tracking it. The cart rattled and shook across the bumpy pavement as I trudged along; my hands tingled from the vibration of the handlebar, and for a brief moment, I considered the ice cream. The poor, melting ice cream.
As I rounded the corner to the fuel center, all eyes were on me. One individual pointed me in the direction of the balloon, which was no longer in sight. The gas station attendant left his office to come out and see what was going on, adding that he saw the balloon fly by a minute ago. I paused, stopping to catch my breath and stared North, into the direction of the lost balloon and decided to call it quits.
My eyes burned as tears began to fall. Jesus, was I really crying over a HAPPY BIRTHDAY! balloon? In the next moment, it became so clear to me why.
The balloon represented everything I’d given up since becoming a mother. The balloon was everything I’ve wanted to hold onto, but couldn’t; everything I’ve wanted to pursue, but had to put on pause. It was a blatant metaphor for what I could or couldn’t do as a mother of two kids. If Kai wouldn’t have been strapped to my chest, there’s no doubt in my mind I would have caught that balloon.
Everything has been slower and harder and messier since kids, and one of the hardest lessons and changes I’ve experienced in the transition to motherhood has been letting go of what and how much my former self could do as I come to terms with my new reality. The literal weight of a child strapped to my chest as I chased the balloon across the parking lot was the clearest picture of how I’ve been adjusting to motherhood since Loren was born.
The balloon represented my goals and passions that have been put on pause or drastically modified. That memoir I hope to write, the travelling I long to do, the daily yoga practice I can’t finish (or start) without constant interruption, the dream of a full night’s sleep…
There are so many things that change when a person becomes a mother for the first time. In many ways, it’s required a deep letting go of who I was before kids, and, in the same breath, it’s been a challenge to rediscover who I am outside of this all-consuming identify of motherhood.
I loaded the groceries into the back of the Tahoe and put Kai into his car seat. For the hell of it, I drove North, toward the direction of the lost balloon, and circled the Dollar General parking lot, the last real establishment before an endless stretch of cornfields, my last real chance of finding the balloon. Of course, it was nowhere in sight.
I wasn’t going to buy another balloon. I was too tired, the ice cream was likely mush, and I was becoming more and more okay with the adventure of losing it, and the stories I’d have in its absence.
1. I have to know, was the ice cream still good when you got home?
2. 99.999 percent of people are not sexualizing babies, they are just paying a compliment & making harmless banter. (Btw Kai is a handsome devil, just accept it!)