This weekend I took my 3 1/2 year old grandson for an airplane ride.
He has been with his mother when she's taken me to the airport and I wanted him to experience the reality of flying in an airplane.
I know a guy who owns a seaplane so we scheduled a ride over the bay on Sunday. I watched my grandson's face as we rose up into the sky & he realized he was in the air, high above the water. I could almost see his mind working as he looked intently at everything below him. He was very quiet. I don't think he was afraid. I got the sense he was trying to grasp the concept of being in a small airplane in the sky unattached to anything.
After the airplane ride we went to a mall where I bought him a shiny helium balloon that I tied to his wrist before we left the building. I should not of used a bow knot because the wind was blowing pretty hard & as we reached the car the balloon unattached itself & went sailing off over the roof top startling a couple of seagulls who flew up, wings outstretched as they hovered in the strong wind. At that moment I was reminded of the Wright brothers and how they studied the flight of birds. I watched the balloon diminish and as it climbing higher in the sky, another thought came to my mind. It was something my mother told me when I was a small child ...when your coveted balloon escapes into the sky, it flies up & up, all the way to heaven until it reaches the little children there & some lucky little boy or girl who died and went to heaven will find it.
My mom expected me to believe, as she did, that heaven really existed and was full of dead children.

I used to tell my own children all manner of stories about magic, witches, princesses, princes, ogres and dragons. We would lay in bed & make up grand adventures where they conquered dragons & giants and lived in palaces or tropical islands, but I NEVER expected them to believe it!

I imagine telling my grandson a story like this...
Once upon a time people used to believe that when you died you went to live in the sky high above, beyond where birds and airplanes can fly. Even beyond the stars. They believed there was a magic land beyond the clouds ruled by a powerful king who was so rich that the streets were paved with gold and diamonds. And so powerful he could make dead people alive again. The people believed that when a balloon flew away into the sky, like yours just did, it would would fly up & up until it reached the magic land beyond the stars and perhaps a boy playing in a grassy heavenly meadow would look up and there your balloon would be. It would float down until it landed at his feet. And... as he picked it up he would remember when he was a boy like you & had a balloon that floated away one day into the sky.