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Kier

Devon, July 2018

I wake up in the middle of the night, breathing heavily, my skin clammy against the sheet.

I didn’t dream of Romy’s necklace, as I’d expected, but of balloons, hanging on branches high above my head.

The balloons were a birthday tradition Mum started when we were kids. She’d fill balloons with gifts and then blow them up, hang them from the branches of the cherry blossom tree in the garden.

Wielding knitting needles, Penn and I would thrust our hands above our heads to try to pop them. We’d often miss, balloons bouncing out of reach, and some were empty, but when we found something inside – sweets, a bracelet, a small toy … it was total joy.

It’s one of my favourite memories. Opening the back door and seeing the balloons bobbing wildly in the wind, our giddy excitement as gifts rained down on the floor and we raced to pick them up.

Mum did a lot of things like this, things that must have taken her a disproportionate amount of time to plan and create versus what must have been only ten minutes at most of actual fun, but she seemed to love it as much as us. Maybe even more so.

I’ve often wondered if all those good things she did for us, experiencing our joy, was her way of counteracting all the bad. Balancing the scales.

The balloon tree became a point of interest on my first map. I painted the tree and balloons as one, the tree itself taking on the bold colours of the balloons. The trunk, branches, all of it, somehow transcend the natural world. They look full of life itself, joy. Love.

Looking back now, I can see that all the places I painted on that first map were places where Mum had done something wonderful for us.

But in last night’s dream, the balloons aren’t wonderful.

When I pop them, all I get is blood.