1982

It was just that one day.
I remember the Liberty Bell. Standing on bricks, or maybe it was big tiles of grey and brown cement, and then held on my mother's shoulder while the tour guide talked and talked to the small crowd of us. We wanted to know about the Liberty Bell, to hear what this skinny man could tell us about it. The weather was cool but not cold, and my sister stood down by my mother's feet as we behaved well in public. Everyone was in a good mood, all the strangers in the little crowd felt happy like on the first fall day. It was a big flat space we were standing on, under a roof but with openness around us, maybe just columns holding up the protective ceiling.
Then, later, we were in a glass elevator, but that's not how I remember it. We were touring a building that I thought must be better than most buildings if we were going all through it just to see it, not for any real reason to be there. I don't know what it was. We had a tour guide there, and we all climbed onto a platform with no sides, suddenly outside. I was near the middle, surrounded by knees in suit pants and long skirts. I thought I was in the middle so that the adults could keep me from falling off the sides. We were high, high up in the air with nothing holding us up except some ropes or cables in the corners, and we were going down down. So many people crammed onto the platform, and I wasn't sure where the edges were. No one else seemed worried, and this scared me even more. I started crying out of fear and my mother looked down at me in complete confusion. We might all fall off! nothing was even holding us up!
I stopped crying because I turned around and saw a girl almost right on my eye level appear between the strangerlegs, holding a big red balloon. It might have been yellow. She stood looking at me, perfectly calm and blank, and I looked at her and envied her balloon. Don't let go of it, I thought to her, it will fly away forever.