Ten of Balloons

I was driving to pick up my boys, one weekend, in an affluent neighborhood in Winnipeg, where they lived with their Mother and step Father. The river was nearby, and I passed by large homes with spacious yards. There, I saw a driveway to a home not visible, for the trees, and noticed a sign surrounded by yellow balloons. Happy 50th Birthday was scribed on it.

I remember ruminating that this somehow represented a successful man and that this was a milestone, a banner year, in which to celebrate his honestly earned accomplishments. All of his creative efforts and loving marriage had culminated on this day of happy celebration; so I posited in that birthday sign surrounded by balloons.

Yet, who knows how this life really was. No doubt, happiness, fleeting, visited, as it does with us all. But who can keep this happiness inside walls of brick and wood? Who is capable of this Herculean task, this blood, sweat and tears, to hold fast to this ephemeral experience of secure joy and triumph; marked, as it were, by a sign surrounded by balloons.

Even the balloon, stretched and firm, soon releases its inspired life to the wind; spent and flaccid! Is this not so with happiness, too?

Yet, there are lives, sifting through time in their happy pursuits, I imagine. Simply living out each day in a magical bubble of certainty and faith. Hearts pure and innocent, established in the community; plain lives with real smiles untormented by fears and worries. Just lives, holding hands, crossing busy streets of vice and temptation, to bounteous gardens of virtues happy wholeness. Like playful children with joyful abandon and natural grace, generous with smiles, and kind.

Happiness, then! Is it time well spent? I see in that yard a wizened old man, slumped in his lawn chair, deep in a just slumber. His children's children play with abandon all around the great yard, where bounteous gardens bear their fall fruits. The remains of a festive feast lay on the table, while birds' songs twitter in the crispness of a sunny day. His dog lay by his side in simple easy obedience. His wholesomely beautiful wife looks on the happy scene from the kitchen window with a gracious smile of contented gratitude. A sleepy joy is here... as seen in the Tarot card, the Ten of Pentacles, above, from the Rider Waite Deck.

The other day, walking by another affluent neighborhood, I saw a sign, marred and weathered by some days gone by. Surrounded by dark and deflated balloons, wrinkled and unceremoniously blowing in the wind. Written, obviously with hurried strokes, was, 'Everything must go, Moving and Divorce sale! Saturday and Sunday only'!