The ice cold weather bites at my nose and cheeks with the wind burning my eyes as soon as my feet sink into the soggy tanned coloured sand of the beach. I look out to the grey sea that I know will be as ice cold as the wind around me. The white waves crash down creating a off coloured foam as the hit the water underneath them. As I look the my right I see the brown jagged rocks that form the cliff of the Brig. It is a place that I am so familiar with, after all my childhood was spent here in this place. I step out further onto the light brown sand that is darker in patches where the sea has just slightly touched it. The tide is going out. To my left a black Labrador runs towards the water chasing the small green tennis ball. It quickly catches it before turning back and running towards the elderly man that had thrown it. As my footsteps quicken I realise I have a whole in the bottom of my left shoe and I can feel the fresh water seeping through my socks, touching the soles of my foot. It makes me feel alive for once. The wind blows stronger for a second and the string that I hold tightly in my right hand pulls causing the balloon to try and escape my grasp. Not yet. I try and tell it in my mind. You will be free to fly soon. I picked the biggest in the shop this morning. It’s the same thing I have done every year since she left me. This one though had the number five on it. She would have been five today. It is purple of course because that always seemed to be her favourite colour. She left me when she was two and every year I have done the same thing. Bought a balloon and come to this place. This very beach where we spend our last day together. I slow my steps, hoping that this will stop the wind from trying to take her balloon too early. I have to get this just right. Go to the same place where I have been the last few times. I pull on the string, trying my best to make the balloon come with me. I feel my foot getting colder and colder with the sea water that is soaking right through the sole of my shoe. I already know that on the walk back to the car I will be stopping off at the shoe shop and placing these ones in the nearest bin. I am almost angry at myself that I didn’t notice the hole sooner. How could I have dressed so shabby, and on her birthday as well. I almost think that she would be disappointed in me. That I had let her down, and definitely not for the first time. I finally reach the place that I had been heading for. A small cluster of rocks just before larger clusters that had fallen down over the years due to erosion. I only come once a year now and I think each time that more rocks have been adding to the pile. The state of our little planet, I think. I step up onto one of the smaller rocks, being careful the whole time that I done slip with the slimy seaweed that has made its home there. I pull the balloon alone with me, making sure that I can stretch my arm out and heigh enough to complete the task that I have given myself. I hold my arm up and look at the balloon above me. The way the wind is trying to take it, it looks almost desperate to get out of my grasp. I lift up my left arm and look at the time on my watch. 14.35. I know then that it’s time. Adjusting the string once more I release my grasp and watch it as it starts its climb higher and higher into the sky. It was the time that she was born and therefore has been the time that I have released the balloon for her. With the winds help, the balloon is a dot in the sky to me now and I know that it’s on its way to her. A small gift from me down on earth, to my only daughter up in heaven.