When do we realize that things will never be quite as innocent as they once were? They will never be quite as simple, quite as magical.

It was one of those windy, cloudy, heavy winter days. My family lived in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, at the time, right across from the building of the International Fair. The International Fair was something incredible. Once a year, companies would come to showcase the newest Western-made products. My family would take me there as a kid to see things we could never see on the streets of Plovdiv.

This particular day has remained in my mind. My parents bought me a balloon. During those times, a balloon, especially a helium one, so intricately designed and beautifully crafted, was hard to find. My little hand clutched onto that string as if everything in the world depended on it. Despite the biting wind, my rosy cheeks pushed back in a beautiful little smile. I had my balloon.

As we walked out of the fair, the wind blew fiercely. Before I knew what to do, it stole my balloon. I watched it dance upward for a few seconds and hot tears filled my eyes. I noticed how the wind didn’t pop it, but instead played tag with it, laughed with it, sang with it, as if only to make me jealous.

I cried at the thought of losing something so beautiful that was mine, but, like most beautiful things, only for a while. It stayed in front of me, close enough to touch, but just out of my reach. The tragedy of this moment was that in my 5-year-old mind, I didn’t know-I couldn’t know-that I would ever have another balloon just that beautiful. I thought it was the only balloon in the whole world, and I let it go. I let the first gust of wind pull it out of my hand.

Now, 15 years later, when I walk past the flower section in the grocery store, I run into the balloons, helium ones, in color. Some of them even sing. But I have never bought one. I have never paid much attention to them. I don’t know their forms, their colors. And I don’t want to. I am too grown up now to look at balloons. Who has time for balloons . right?

But life hides its meaning, its beauty and its magic in simple moments. These moments don’t hide in books and equations. They don’t hide at all. Perhaps that is why they are hardest to find.So, when you have found your balloon, and you think that it is the only beautiful balloon in all the world, hold tight to that string. Never let the first gust of wind fool you. Because, if you hold on, it will bring back the magic, the innocent beauty that, only lives in childhood memories.

Dorotea Lechkova is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences.