A summer rain ~ July 2, 1987

David Heiller

 Rain fell Sunday afternoon. It splashed off our garden beds at first, raising a dust storm for the bees and ants. Then it settled the dust and ran off the beds and finally soaked in.

Malika, always moving to the next adventure.

I stood in the doorway with my two children. They had been lobbying during the past hour for a trip to the park. I had been urging a compromise walk down the road. Their expressions as they looked at the rain fall outside the screen door reflected the overcast sky.

“Now we can go to the park after the rain?” Noah asked.

“Pahk atta rain?” Malika echoed.

“Well, it’s pretty wet there,” I said uneasily. “Maybe we should stay home, then go tomorrow when it’s done raining.” I knew tomorrow would be better, what with their grandmother here for a visit.

Malika pushed past Noah as I opened the door to breath in the late afternoon air. The rain was letting up, after just an hour. We needed more, the garden and hayfields needed more, the Askov and Finlayson water towers needed more.

Drops of water fell from the roof, landing on Malika’s head as she peered up at the clouds. She moved barefoot onto the porch, then ran on tip toes under the maple tree. The water sprayed her like a gentle sprinkler. She didn’t care about the park. This was much better.

Noah, bike and boots...

Noah used his four-year-old common sense as he watched his sister test the water. “Mollie doesn’t have shoes on,” he said as he pulled on a pair of rubber boots. He wears those boots on the hottest days of the summer as well as the coldest winter days. Today he was lucky it was raining, so it made sense, and he could afford to remind me in a righteous voice, “Daddy, Mollie doesn’t have shoes on.”

“That’s fine,” I answered absently. The sun broke through the western rim of the storm. Suddenly the air was cool and clear, washed by the rain. The garden glistened, the plants crisp, the soil dark.

Birds circled over the rows, a platoon of tree swallows that wove and spun as they snatch invisible mosquitoes. A cat bird called from the windbreak of white spruce, a loud and angry call like a tomcat with a sore throat. Our cat, Miss Emma, sauntered from the trees toward the house, followed by those angry cat calls. I looked for a bird drooping from her jaw, but she just smiled. Not even a feather in sight.

A male bluebird swept in to its house on the clothes line pole. The sun caught its bright blue feathers, its orange breast ruffled slightly as it hurried to feed the young peepers inside the house.

The afternoon settled into evening. We took our walk, Malika sitting in her wagon, Noah riding ahead on his 12-inch bicycle with training wheels. Then it was home to see Mom and Grandma, baths for the kids, a Sesame Street story, and up to bed.

Darkness crept over the yard, Cindy’s mother stood at the kitchen window, looking at the apple tree. “There’s a deer there eating apples,” she said. Sure enough, a deer moved easily under the tree, grazing the newly watered grass, picking up tiny apples that the kids had knocked down. It had two spikes for antlers, covered with fuzz.

“Is Noah awake?” I asked.

“No, he’s sleeping,” Grandma answered. She had gone to check the minute she spotted the deer.

Finally the deer moved slowly down our driveway and north up the county road, toward some new supper, or perhaps a bed for the night.

Malika and Binti

^‘I stepped outside. Our dog, Binti, lay under the apple tree, in full sight of the deer. She wagged her tail slightly, but didn’t move except to raise her eyebrows as she glanced at me. “Pretty nice, huh?” she seemed to say.

Pretty nice, I agreed.

Some fish never stop growing ~ July 6, 1989

David Heiller

We did a lot of fishing when I was a kid, growing up on the Mississippi River in southeastern Minnesota. I have a thousand memories, but one stands out. It’s so old, I only remember remembering it, if you know what I mean.

It was a summer evening, when I was about six. We were fishing off a dock south of Brownsville, in the backwater. The dock was full of us kids. I had a cane pole, of course, and stood at the edge of the black water, which lapped over the old wooden planks and onto our feet. It was that still time of day, with the warm smell of summer evening in the air, a smell kids know, a mixture of fish and water and wet wood and mayflies and warm sunshine.

I remember that smell, and I remember my cane pole just about jumped out of my hand as a fish took the huge bobber under. I pulled up, the black line straining, and suddenly a huge bass lay thrashing on the dock. It shook out the hook, and started flopping toward the water. Glenn, my older brother, stood and gawked for a split second. Then he pounced on the fish like a cat, and clutched it in 15-year-old hands, a lunker large mouth.

It seemed like a lunker to me, anyway. We measured it at 16 inches on the spot. By the time we got home, it was 18 inches long. That’s all the longer Glenn would allow it to grow, and it has stayed there for 29 years. I admired that black bass for years. I used to hold my hands apart 18 inches, and tell myself, “That’s how long it was.” I could see its green back, the black line running down the side, the huge mouth, the red in its eye. It’s been my favorite fish ever since.

Noah's bass

This past weekend, we took a family vacation to a cabin on Pelican Lake, near Orr, Minnesota. As soon as we had unpacked the car, we piled into the boat, and headed for a fishing hole, my son, Noah, my sister-in-law, Nancy, and me.

We pulled up at a narrow channel between two small islands. It looked like a good spot, according to the resort map. “Reef,” it said, showing tiny lines in a circle. Besides, another boat was here too. They must know what they were doing, I thought. That’s a basic rule of fishing: If you don’t know what you’re doing, find someone who looks like they do. One of the guys from their boat was in the water, tugging at the anchor rope. “Anchor’s stuck on the rocks,” he called out as we pulled up 30 feet away.

Noah cast a nightcrawler out from his Mickey Mouse rod and reel, while I bent down to bait my hook. Suddenly there was a splashing. Noah yelled, “I’ve got one, I’ve got one.” His rod, all three feet of it, was doubled over the side of the boat out of sight. It pulled him to his feet.

“Pull it in,” I said, thinking it was a sunny. Then I saw the swirl of a large green back in the water. I gawked for a split second. “Help him, Nancy,” I called. She reached out, grabbed his line, and hoisted the fish into the boat.

“Look at that, Dad,” Noah said. He held up a largemouth bass, about 16 inches in length. It must have weighed a pound and a half, maybe a little more.

Good fishing for Noah, David, and Nancy.

“Nice bass,” the guy in the water called from the nearby boat. It was an honest compliment, but did I detect a touch of jealousy, a wistful tone in his voice? Where had I heard that before? From my brother on the dock south of Brownsville 29 years ago?

The fishing peaked then and there. We caught plenty of sunnies the next two days, plus perch and crappies and smallmouth and rock bass and a two pound northern. But no more largemouth bass like that.

Which was fine with Noah. Because the largemouth began to grow almost as soon as it was filleted and refrigerated. “How big was it, Dad?” he asked that evening as we returned to the hot spot. He held his hands maybe two feet apart. “That big?”

“No, not quite,” I answered, trying not to smile.

“That big?” He moved his hands 18 inches palm-to-palm, but they immediately drifted apart, like opposite poles on a magnet, and the fish grew some more.

“Yeah, I guess so,” I said, smiling.

And for a split second, I smelled it again, that smell of fish and water and wet wood and mayflies and warm sunshine.

Keep the gas tank filled – the baby’s on it’s way ~ June 27, 1985

David Heiller

1:12 a.m. Tuesday, June 18: The light is on over the bed. Cindy is sitting bent over slightly at the edge. Her face is tight. She’s looking at her watch.

“Five minutes apart, 45 seconds long,” she says in a breathless way. “The contractions.”

“Huh?” I mumble, feeling very cozy under the blankets of this cool dark morning.

“Let’s go, Dave,” she says. “I think this is it.” Suddenly, very suddenly, I’m awake.

4:20 a.m. Tuesday, June 18: We’ve just dropped Noah off with a friend in Rutledge. So far, so good, with our Plan. Suitcase is packed, dog and cat fed. We even had time for a quick sauna before leaving. We are on our way to the hospital in Duluth.

Cindy spies the gas gauge. Less than a quarter of a tank. “Do I have to take care of everything?” she asks.

“This is the first time in two weeks I didn’t get gas,” I say in a weak voice. So much for that part of the Plan. “Why, just today, I pulled into the Deep Rock, but I didn’t have any checks with me. Besides, you’re a week early, you know.”

Somehow, blaming Mother Nature is a watery excuse, and Cindy doesn’t bother to answer it.

4:45 a.m. Tuesday, June 18: We’re just picked up a friend in Moose Lake. Diane was with us for Noah’s birth, and will be labor assistant again. She sits in the back seat, rubbing Cindy’s shoulders and talking softly. Diane gave birth to all six of her children at home. Plus she’s helped quite a few others into the world. Her presence calms my butterflies somewhat. Still, as we approach the Carlton exit on 1-35, my stomach feels like Cindy’s. A combination of two cups of tea, a glass of orange juice, and a near-empty tank, all having their effect.

I pull over at a truck stop, fill the tank, and go to the bathroom. Suddenly things seem much better, for me at least.

8:15 a.m. Tuesday, June 18: We’ve been here for three hours. Contractions are down to three minutes apart, lasting a minute and a half Cindy is dilated to six centimeters. The doctor comes in for the first time. He’s been out of town all weekend, and a nurse finally got hold of him. Cindy’s face lights up when she sees him. It’s a look I haven’t seen before, the look of a woman about to try a natural birth, after a Caesarean Section, looking at the doctor she has trusted to help her.

“You’re processing well,” he says. “The baby is still posterior. It’s still got some rotating to do, but it’s moving down nicely into the birth canal. It looks good.”

The doctor gives Cindy’s hand a squeeze and heads for the door. “I’m going to make my rounds now, and go to my office across the street.” He looks at me, reads my eyes. “I won’t be more than three minutes away. Don’t worry.”

9:20 a.m. Tuesday, June 18: Cindy is lying on the delivery table, trying not to push. We’ve been waiting for the doctor for 15 minutes. Cindy is dilated 10 centimeters and can hardly hold back as the contractions sweep over her. The intercom is calling for the doctor at a steady interval. A nurse calls his office. Nobody says anything. We hardly look at one another. I glance at Diane as we knead Cindy’s back. “Where is he?” my look says. “We’ve got lots of time,” her look answers.

10:23 a.m. Tuesday, June 18: We’ve been pushing for 40 minutes. I say “we.” Any husband who has sat by his wife’s side at a birth knows what I mean. Cindy’s arms and legs feel like ironwood when she pushes. Deep breath, face contorts into a grimace. Knuckles turn white at her side, feet and legs strain against the stirrups.

The doctor checks Cindy again. No progress. The baby is about two inches from crowning, and not coming any further. The doctor can see its head. He shows me. “Oh, it’s a girl, she’s got brown hair,” I say. A few short laughs.

But there is no humor in the room. The baby, he or she, is stuck. It happened two years ago too, only that time there were forceps and an ambulance, and just enough doubts to make us try again.

‘I’ll let you push for another half hour, but to be quite honest, I don’t think it’ll go,” the doctor says. Cindy is exhausted. The pain is almost too much, since she has held off from any pain killer. “It’s your decision.”

I look at Cindy. “It’s your decision, Cindy,” I say. “No, it’s our decision,” she answers.

“That’s right,” the doctor says, looking at me. I’ve seen enough pain for a year in the last hour. “Let’s get it over with,” I tell Cindy.

She nods a reply.

11:58 a.m. Tuesday, June 18: I pet Cindy’s hair, sitting by her head in the operating room. A sheet separates Cindy’s head and me from the rest of her body. It could be a mile away for Cindy too. She can’t feel a thing from the chest down. Her eyes are clear of pain for the first time all morning, as she smiles at me.

Our nurse catches my eye, and lifts her chin with a come-here, motion. “You ready for this?” she asks. “Stand up.”

Malika Lynette, June, 1985.

And there it is, not it—he or she, this purple tiny baby thing that gets rushed to the warming table in the corner. A tiny voice cracks, a single cry that could split a log of oak. The newest, most anxious and pleading and happy-to-be-here sound, that has made moms and dads cry since memory itself.

“You’ve got a little girl,” the doctor says.

“A little girl, we’ve got a little girl,” Cindy and I both say as our cheeks touch, our tears touch. For a handful of seconds, time has stopped. And a new life has begun.

On hiking and biking and growing up ~ June 23, 1988

David Heiller

“Daddy, will you take the training wheels off my bike this morning?”

I looked at my son on that bright May morning. It was not the first time he had asked the question. “I took them off once before, and that didn’t work so well,” I reminded him as gently as possible. They were off for about two weeks, and 14 bruises later, back on again.

Noah lifted each hand, as if weighing a couple of cantaloupes in a grocery store. That was his gesture that signaled the coming of a profound, four-year-old statement, "But Dad" he said, shrugging and raising his hands, "that was before. I'm older now. I'm almost five."

The bike with the training wheels. There appear
to be no photos AFTER the training wheels were gone, I guess because, he never stopped!

“And Matt can ride his bike,” he added. That’s the real reason, I thought, grabbing a wrench from the garage. We had been riding along the Hinckley Fire Trail a month earlier, Noah perched on a seat behind me. We had passed his friend Matt pedaling his own bike, without training wheels. Matt’s grin was as wide as the bike trail.

So Noah’s training wheels came off again. Cindy and I left for work, leaving Noah to practice with a babysitter, Josh. When we came home that afternoon, Noah ran up to us, proclaiming the miracle that he had learned to ride the bike without training wheels.

Sure enough, as we watched beside the car, Noah wobbled forward about 10 feet on his own. At first he had a hard time getting going, and Josh had to give him a push. Sometimes his feet would pedal backwards instead of forward, and the brakes would stop him cold. But he was definitely on his own. Like a bird leaving its nest, he could fly.

Over the next few weeks, Noah’s bike riding skills improved in quantum leaps. He would ride the little 12-inch bike at every spare moment—when he got up, when he got home from day care, after lunch. Soon he could turn circles, then he could ride standing up. One time, he barreled the full length of the driveway, and down the hill toward the outhouse. I stopped from working in the garden as he sped past, and I thought he would end up head first down one of the two holes. But he slammed on the brakes and slid to a grassy stop in front of the door.

“See Dad?” he said, smiling, reading my worried look.

When Gradma Olson came up for Noah’s fifth birthday two weeks ago, Noah had to show off his bike riding skills. He ran naked from the sauna and streaked down the driveway on the bike.

Last Saturday, Noah traded his bike for his hiking shoes. We were camping in Tettegouche State Park on the North Shore. On Saturday, we headed for a long hike. I carried Malika on my back most of the way. Noah walked at a pace that let him search for animal tracks along the trail. We stopped a couple times along the way. Once, a red squirrel scolded us. Noah claimed it was a chipmunk. We stopped at one lake, where Noah watched a fisherman pull in a stringer of nice northerns, one at least seven pounds. On we walked, through cedar swamps and huge hardwoods, up hills and over planks. We ate lunch at an old logging camp. I admired a white pine so large that two people couldn’t link hands around its base. Noah admired a wood chuck which had its home under a root cellar.

As we headed back on the last leg of the trip, Noah started complaining. But Cindy told him, “If you are a good hiker Noah, maybe we can go camping for a whole week in the mountains.”

Noah channeling his totem, the Siberian tiger.

“In the Rocky Mountains?” he asked. Yes, we answered, knowing that the Rocky Mountains held his second favorite animal, the grizzly bear. (His favorite is a Siberian tiger.)

With that inspiration, Noah hiked on. His pace slipped a little, but he kept on. He had to be carried twice, for a quarter mile or so. When we got back to camp, we carefully measured the trip at seven-and-a-half miles. Noah, we figured, had hiked seven of those by himself.

Both Noah and Malika went to sleep quickly that night, curled in their bags in our tent. A storm came up at about 11, as our campfire flickered. By the time we had settled in next to the kids, a real thunderstorm hit. Thunder boomed, and lightening lit up the top of the tent with white and yellow flashes that hurt our eyes, lying in the black tent.

We grabbed the flashlight and shined it on the kids. Noah sat up. “Where’s Mollie?” he asked. “Is she all right?” ‘

We shined the light on Mollie for him. She stirred a little, but did not wake up in spite of the pounding rain and thunder and lightning.

Noah lay on his back next to us. When the lightning flashed, we could see his eyes wide, staring at the top of the tent. It was high adventure for the Great Hiker, the Great Bike Rider.

I found myself thinking too, not about the storm but about our son. I thought about his bike riding, how he could now do little “wheelies” and ride one-handed. I thought about him hiking seven miles and still lying awake, while my back was killing me from carrying Malika all day. I thought about how his muscles were changing, how his legs had the shape of men’s legs, with strong calves. I thought about his first reaction in the storm, asking about his baby sister. Was she safe?

For a second time stood still, frozen by a lightning flash, and it flashed to me—my son was growing up.

Minnesota weather—June frost and relative humility ~ June 5, 1986

David Heiller

Minnesotans are a humble folk. We aren’t known for our decisiveness, our positive thinking. Ask someone how they’re doing, and they’ll likely reply, “Not too bad,” or “I can’t complain,” “Pretty good, I guess.”

Even my three-year-old son realizes his humble fate. He thinks we live in Maybe-Soda, and Grandma Olson lives in Maybe-Applis. It’s a state-wide shyness flowing from Lake Wobegon to Lake City, from Worthington to Warroad. Steve Cannon of WCCO is perhaps the only person in the state with relative humility, and that’s just during the weather report.

 Noah thinks we live in Maybe-Soda,
 and Grandma Olson lives in Maybe-Applis.

I had some personal insight into al this on Sunday. Last week’s weather had broken all kinds of records. Duluth had 86 degrees on May 28, International Falls: 91. We were somewhere in between. The warm weather held through Friday, as we got our garden ready for spring planting. I even took a day off for the ritual. Cindy, my wife, drove with confidence to a greenhouse and bought 24 tomato sets, 12 peppers, and some odds and ends for the weekend planting.

The last of the garden beds were finished by Sunday. Cindy and Noah went to church in the morning, while Malika and I stayed home and fertilized the soil with bone meal and blood meal. Sunday afternoon, under 60 degree, partly cloudy skies, we planted tomatoes and peppers and flowers and Brussels sprouts. The clouds broke, sunlight blessed our hard work, and a lady on the radio said temperatures would be in the 70s on Monday.

After the kids were tucked away Sunday evening, I returned to the garden. Two robins chirped to each other in the spruce trees. A pair of goldfinches sat atop the end spruce, the bright gold male a step higher on the branches than his mate. Two cedar waxwings perched quietly in the dead branches of the elm tree next to the house. The wrens nesting in their home on the clothes line pole stayed inside, the mother warming her tiny eggs.

God was in his heaven, all was right with the world. It was enough to make a Minnesotan downright confident and happy, even a newspaper editor. I brought a paper bag full of old newspapers to the tomato beds, and started to spread them next to the plants. The first batch held shoppers. I placed them with a vengeance on the ground, thinking they would finally be put to a good use. Then I opened up a Pine County Courier, and laid Richard Coffey next to a plant. I felt like reading his column first, but knew he would understand, and his wife Jeanne would be proud to have him play such an active role in weed control.

But I soon ran out of other newspapers and even the Omni-present shopper. I went to the garage for a bag of Askov Americans. I had been saving them to submit to the National Newspaper Association Better Newspaper Contest, which is why they were still in the garage. Relative humility.

I spread them around the tomatoes. Joel Mortensen crowded one plant. “That one will have a strong taste,” I thought. One of my outhouse columns nestled another. Good fertilizer there.

Soon the tomatoes were nicely mulched. I sprinkled hay on all the crooked headlines and blurred photos, and walked into the house feeling very content. Humble, as only a person who can put a year’s worth of work on his tomatoes feels, but content.

The story should end there, but remember, folks, this is Minnesota. Our one-year-old daughter woke up with a cry at 1 a.m. She may have sensed the danger and warned us. As I stumbled in parent stupor for baby aspirin, I glanced at the outdoor thermometer. Suddenly the stupor disappeared. Thirty-five degrees and falling.

I hurried outside, grabbed the flashlight from the car. I carried sheets from the garage, plastic, blankets, anything I could find, and spread it all over the tomatoes and peppers. I knew I couldn’t sleep till they were all covered.

Cindy called me at work Monday morning. I knew before she said a word the bad news, like a phone call in the middle of the night when a relative is sick.

“The tomatoes, David, all but three have died.”

“Which three didn’t?” I asked. I hope they had been mulched with the American.

“The first three,” she answered.

I started to swear on the phone, then stopped. My Minnesota Confidence had glowed for a day. What the heck. It’s not so bad. We’ll buy more tomatoes. I can’t complain.

Coming in from the rain ~ June 6, 1991

David Heiller

The sound made us pause in the garden on Saturday afternoon like a couple of muck-covered deer.

It sounded like cars on a distant highway, the low, steady sound of rubber hissing on cement, and coming our way in the still air from the southwest.

Cindy and I looked at each other for a second, puzzled. There is no interstate highway connecting Arthyde and Sturgeon Lake. Heck, there are hardly any roads at all. Then we realized that it was a rain shower, its heavy drops hitting the leaves and forest that stretch from Denham west to McGrath, and heading our way.

It was pretty darned rainy!

We’d never heard rain approach like that before. Usually you feel it in the wind as it switches and swirls and turns cold. Or you smell the ozone, or hear thunder. This was just the simple, powerful sound of a blanket of rain ambling like a huge animal through the woods toward us two hapless gardeners.

Sure enough, as the sound grew louder and the highway got closer, we felt drops of rain, at first sporadic, then heavy and steady. Noah Landwehr, who was mowing our lawn, glanced up, then looked our way. “I’m going to keep mowing,” he shouted. I knew he would say that. Even 12-year-olds get fed up with too much rain, which experts say we’ve had, although these experts said we didn’t have enough rain last year at this time.

“I’ll get you a coat,” I answered back, heading for the house for a couple of jackets, one for me and one for him. Cindy soon followed for her coat and two caps, one for her and one for Noah who looked like he’d been run hard and put away wet.

The rain rolled off my coat, drenching my slacks, working its way to inside the tall boots which were heavy with mud. Cindy’s hair hung bedraggled under her cap. Noah mowed on, right through puddles three inches deep, water and grass flying everywhere, like he was water skiing behind a 3½ horsepower Briggs and Stratton. He gave us a sheepish grin and kept on.

“We put the garden in in the rain 10 years ago,” Cindy said as she worked some Frank Larson Angus manure into the soil.

“How can you remember that?” I asked. I can tell you Ted Williams’ batting average in 1940, but I can’t remember working the garden in the rain in 1981.

“It was our first year here, and I remember it rained so much that we planted the garden in the rain,” she said.

Ten years. I’d forgotten that. Things stand out so much when they are new. That was our first garden, and it WAS a wet one. I remembered now, vaguely. We had been as excited as a couple of kids, at our first home, at our adventure in the country, and at our rich garden soil, oozing earthworms and loam and the potential for vegetables that could win first place at the Askov Rutabaga Festival. So excited we hadn’t had the sense to come in from the rain. I guess some things never change.

The rain finally let up, and we straggled inside, and dried off, and had root beer floats in celebration of our crazy mowing and gardening. But we didn’t feel crazy.

You see, normally you don’t mow lawn in the rain, or pull weeds or shape garden beds in the rain. Mothers teach you not to do such things. Grandmas say things like, “He doesn’t have the sense to come in from the rain.” But on Saturday, none of us hesitated. We’d had one too many rain showers this spring, and we all seemed to realize that God would forgive our lack of common sense, working in the rain like this. Heck, maybe He was even testing, to see what we were made of.

I guess He found out, and I think we passed. They say He shaped us from clay anyway. It must have been wet.

Taking her out to the ball game ~ June 4, 1992

David Heiller

How do you define baseball? If you are a six-year-old girl, it’s by the length of the licorice, and the taste of the pop, and Kirby Puckett’s first grand slam.

I took Malika to her first game last Friday. Before the game, I tried to engage her in Baseball Talk (BT). This is the second most boring language in the world (behind the mating noise of a three-toed ground sloth). You say things like, “Wow, Puckett has seven hits in his last 12 at bats.” And your friend answers, “But Lieus can’t hit worth beans with men in scoring position.” Boring.

Fortunately Baseball Talk on Friday was tempered by Kid Talk (KT), which has all the logic of a computer that just fell off a desk. It almost makes sense. Here are some samples of our dialogue, which I jotted down on the back of my scorecard.

Daddy~Daughter Dynamic Duo

BT: Larkin is playing right field.

KT: Who’s Larkin?

BT: You know, Gene Larkin.

KT: Who’s Larkin? What’s a Larkin, Dad?

KT: I see Kirby—the guy cleaning the area out there (around the pitcher’s mound).

BT: No, that’s the groundskeeper.

KT: How many more minutes (till the game starts)?

BT: Twenty

KT: You already said 20.

BT: No, I said 30.

KT: Oh.

KT: I want pudding.

BT: Where’s pudding?

KT: That guy’s holding it.

BT: That’s not pudding. That’s beer.

KT: Oh.

KT: I’m hungry.

BT: (Silence.)

KT: I’m hungry.

BT: (Silence.)

KT: I’m hungry.

BT: (Silence.)

KT: I’M HUNGRY.

She talked about a zillion other things too. She admired in a loud voice a woman’s earrings, which were shaped like little baseballs. (Now THERE’S a good birthday present for Cindy.) She checked out ladies’ purses, and told me (in a loud voice) every time she saw one she liked, or one that resembled her own 47 purses.

Noah and Malika working
 on their Twins imitations

She ogled a baby across the aisle, a kid all of one month old, who was passed between Mom and Dad while they ate pretzels and drank beer.

In between talking, Malika ate. It was a miracle. Her stomach normally holds half a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich, max. But at the game, where food prices are inflated as much as the stadium, she consumed a can of orange soda, three strips of button candy on paper, 67 peanuts, and a licorice rope two feet long.

She finished it all by the fifth inning. “I want a hot dog,” she said. Sure, for another $3, I thought. I put my foot down (on a carpet of peanut shells) and said no. But not until I’d bought myself a glass of “pudding” for $3.25.

We did manage to talk a little baseball, thanks to the idol of every kid who plays catch in Minnesota, Kirby Puckett. Kirby came through. He moved from groundskeeper to hero when he came up with the bases loaded in the fourth inning, and lined a homerun over the right-centerfield fence. We stood and roared with 26,000 other fans. Malika gave me a high-five and hollered, “A grand slam!” I didn’t even know she knew what a grand slam was, but she yelled it. I heard her. There’s hope for her yet.

We didn’t quit clapping until Kirby stepped out of the third base dugout and tipped his cap. A true hero, for the umpeenth time. Then at the top of the fifth, the crowd rose again as Kirby ran out to center field. The scoreboard announced that it was his first grand slam in the majors. It showed a replay, then a close-up of Kirby, who modestly doffed his cap again, and gave it a short swirl to the crowd.

My spine tingled. It was a special moment, one I’ll remember for a long time. Malika won’t. But I’m glad she was there with me to share it.

The Twins ended up winning, 17-5. But they could have LOST 17-5 and Mollie wouldn’t have known the difference. She had her food and her questions and her purses and earrings and her Kirby and her Dad. What more to baseball is there?

When we were leaving, she showed a new dance step to anyone who cared to watch, something between the Radio City Rocketts and some Nazi Storm Troopers. Then she tiptoed down the sidewalk, missing every crack for two blocks in honor of her mother’s back.

In the car, she made the predictable announcement: “I don’t feel so good.” Stomach hurt? “Uh-huh.” But no disasters would end this adventure. The car rolled northward through the night, and the dash light soon wrapped a sleeping girl in its warm, green glow.

The next morning, I asked Mollie what she thought of the game. “I just loved it,” she said dramatically.

“What’d you love about it?” I asked.

She shrugged her shoulders. “The Twins won. I want to go to another game next time.” Sounds good to me.