God Grant Me Balloons
Parental relationships are a major aspect of the narrative, with the story pursuing a thematic strain reflecting the turmoil of addiction within a pattern of emotional cycling. Ultimately, however, things move toward a sense of finality even if not necessarily a fundamental two-way conclusion:
“I let go of my hurt. I let go years of frustration between us. Most of all, I let go of any desire to change my father and I accepted him for who he was. I took all of my anguish and released it like a fistful of helium balloons to the sky, and I chose to forgive him.”
And That’s the Story
Parental difficulties lie beneath, creating a foundation upon which emotional unrest unsettles. But the story at heart is about addiction. And few aspects of modern life are more eminently suitable for metaphor than drug abuse. Not least due, at least partly, to the fact that dealing with drug abuse strictly literally quickly becomes an impossibly depressing drudge for even the most talented of writers:
“Drugs were like a wrecking ball tearing through our family, and even though Lisa and I were impacted, I couldn’t help but feel that Ma and Daddy were the ones who needed protecting.”
Looks Like Tsunami Weather
After a third consecutive night of rain, the narrator’s mother suddenly makes a strange observation about it being “tsunami weather.” This leads directly to an analysis of the haphazard and indiscriminate ways in which her mother’s mind seemed to work when it came to sharing information and experience the narrator never knew was there:
“Sometimes, the randomness of what Ma offered in conversation made her seem like a stranger. I both did and didn’t like learning things about her this way. It was like bobbing for pieces of Ma in the dark space that was her past”
Grief
Grief over the death of a parent manifests itself in a variety of ways. For instance, some crawl into bed direct from the funeral and don’t crawl out again for days or weeks. Such is not the problem experienced by the narrator:
“The week after we buried Ma, I stopped sleeping, any rest that I got was interrupted by cold shivers and my heart, pounding me awake, beating on the walls of my chest frantically like the wings of a caged bird.”
The New York Times Scholarship
Being named one of the six students to win one of the coveted New York Times Scholarship changes everything for the author. It is not simply a question of change, but rapid change that comes almost too fast for proper preparation or the ability to appreciate it as it is happening:
“Whirlwind. That’s the word that comes to mind when I think of how to describe my life after winning the scholarship. A floodgate had opened, and I had no way of knowing that my life would simply never be the same.”
