Inside the Balloon

After years of getting pounced on at 5:30 in the morning, my husband and I, zombies by now, finally decided to lock our bedroom door and say NO to our early rising children. So we sat them down and told them about the upcoming changes that were to take place in our family. “Listen up, Levi clan,” I began, “We are instituting a new policy in our home. As of tomorrow morning at 5:30AM there will be no more coming into ima and abba’s (mom and dad’s) bedroom when you wake up. You can play in your bedroom, the guest room, the basement, or the play room but you may NOT come into our room. The door will be locked. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

So my kids and I laid out some paper and crayons, puzzles and blocks, and a few other quiet toys that they agreed would be fun to play with early in the morning. They seemed genuinely excited for their big morning of unsupervised play. Feeling proud of our clever selves, my husband and I looked anxiously toward the morrow when we would, without a doubt, achieve some long overdue sleep.

“Ahhh,” I said smiling to hubby, “I can almost hear the morning silence, can you?”

But low and behold, there was no morning silence to be heard. Not even for a second. Because come 5:30AM, my noisy brood sauntered right past the paper and crayons and made a b-line for our bedroom door as if the family meeting had never taken place. They knocked and banged and cranked and yanked trying painstakingly to get inside, all the while begging us to wake up and let them in. They did this for nearly a half-hour.

“Do you think we’re traumatizing them?” I asked my smart and sensitive husband who has his Master’s degree in family therapy. “They’re going crazy out there and we’re not even able to sleep! What’s the point of this? At least if we let them in, they won’t be screaming and banging.”

“No, no,” assured the Harvard grad. “This is normal and the kids will be fine. We’re creating a boundary and they must learn to respect it. Every day they will bang less and less until they get the picture. It’s like the vacuum inside of a balloon.”

“Huh? It’s 6:00 AM… What vacuum? Whose balloon?”

“When you are blowing up a balloon,” he explained, eyes still closed, “the empty space is created and maintained through constant effort and focused breath. If we don’t create a special space we will never have it.”

And so we waited…and waited…and waited in our special, earsplitting space, as the rage continued outside our door. And in my pursuit of peace and quiet (after barking at my kids to go away and trying to stuff pillows into my ears) I realized that this gargantuan task of creating and maintaining special space is a lesson for everything important and worthwhile in life. Because there are always so many things we want to do, or need to do, or really should do but we don’t do because “we just don’t have the time.” And it’s true—sometimes we really don’t have the time. But from my experience on this planet it seems that we will never just “have” the time unless we forcefully “take” the time. This is the secret to getting those important things done, like talking daily to Hashem and critical evaluation of the self. Sometimes these things require locking the door and ignoring all external pressures.

As a wise philosopher once said: Like blowing up a balloon, making that important phone call, spending quality time with a loved one, praying, meditating, exercising, healing or anything else that we “really should do” will not happen without out focused breath and constant effort. We must endure the racket and the surrounding pressure that constantly tries to cave in on our special space. For within that special space is something sacred.

* * *

After a few days of gritting our teeth and holding strong through the early morning door pounding, the ruckus did indeed lessen and the peace increased. The kids would scream and bang for a few minutes less each day and finally went straight for their toys in the other room.