Great challenges don’t always seem so ‘great’ ~ October, 1985

David Heiller

Challenges come in all shapes and sizes. For a baseball player to bat .400, that’s a challenge. For an executive to earn $892,000, as does the head of Pillsbury, that’s a challenge.

Sometimes, challenges go unnoticed that may be just as important to the individual as those that make the headlines. I can think of a few, and I bet you can too.

One is the tea challenge, or the Tea Cup, driving to work without spilling your hot coffee, or tea, in my case. This competition has certain ground rules. The cup must he filled to the brim when you leave the house, and it must be boiling in the cup, so that a spill will sear flesh and possibly affect your regenerative future. You must also drive a stick shift. The car must have at least 100,000 miles on it. You must cover at least five miles of gravel road with the full cup, in northern Pine County. Roads closer to the county seat are too well maintained to be part of the Tea Cup.

Often, I’m lucky to get out of the driveway before spilling my tea. Sometimes I back over the logs that are waiting to be cut up by the garage. Backing over the logs sends tea cascading off the cup platform by my knee, usually into my briefcase on the floor.

Sometimes the curve at the end of the driveway spills the cup, since I’m often late for work, and am going 30 miles an hour by the time I get the 20 yards to that corner.

Once out of the driveway, the greatest hazard is shifting gears, especially in Lucy. The 1979 Bobcat with 156,000 miles does a two-step when changing gears, if she doesn’t stall first. With all this lurching, you have to be holding the cup of tea, which means one hand on the steering wheel, one hand on the stick shift, and one hand on the cup of tea. Three hands are better than one.

But there are those days that you can brag about, the rare days when you make it out of the driveway, around the curves, over the potholes, and onto the blacktop, as the tea cools to 130 degrees and you can sample it with a cautious slurp.

I had such a day about three weeks ago. I had made it out of Denham, on the detour road, heading for Sturgeon Lake. The cup of tea, still full to the brim, as waiting at my side. I was reaching for it confidently, smiling in anticipation, when the road opened up before me in washboard glory. Lucy bounced wildly over several dozen small canyons in the road. The jolt caused the door on my side to swing open. Instinctively, I reached down with my right hand and grabbed the tea, before it could tip over into my briefcase. Not a drop spilled. I slowed Lucy, grabbed the door and swung it shut, and proceeded on my way.

That was the most enjoyable cup of tea I’d ever drunk. I felt I’d earned it. The Tea Cup was mine for the day.

Challenges like this will never be applauded like the baseball player named to the Hall of Fame for his .400 average or the executive honored for his leadership and his high salary.

But little accomplishments may be just as important, in a relative way. The Tea Cup was a funny example, here’s a more serious one: A month ago, I was babysitting the child of a friend. Andrew, a nine-month-old boy, was sitting backwards on the, edge of the couch, his butt hanging over edge. I was standing about 10 feet away. He had his back to me, and in an, instant, I saw what he was losing his balance, and was falling backward off the couch, his nine-month-old mega-head about to meet our hardwood floor.

I dove across the room, parallel to the floor, arms outstretched. My elbows hit first, just as my arms slid under the baby head and knees, three inches from the floor.

In that split second, it was over. Andrew lay on the floor in my arms, unhurt, wondering what he was suddenly doing there, what I was doing there, holding him on the floor.

I lay there too, laughing, my elbows crying, thinking, “That catch was just as spectacular as the one Willie Mays made against Vic Wertz in the 1954 World Series. But no one will ever know.”

Such is the nature of domestic challenges.

Open season on open houses ~ May 30, 2002

David Heiller

 We’ve been to a lot of graduation open houses over the years, but last Sunday’s was the first one we’ve actually put on.

I use the word “we” loosely. To say “we” put it on would be like counting a mule as a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

I was the mule.

I won’t go through the blow by blow of our open house. It would be easier to describe the invasion of Normandy than to describe all the details that went into the open house.

I think it started when Noah was born, and Cindy started making lists, mentally at least, 18 years ago. “Let’s see, we’ll have to wash the curtains, and fix the blinds, and build an addition.^”

The real lists formed about three months ago. Lists of food to buy and make. Lists of things to borrow. Lists of home improvement projects—big ones!—to do.

I can speak with authority on that last item. That hole in the wall in the entryway did need to be fixed. And it had been 10 years since the living room walls were painted. That flower bed on the south side of the house did need to be re-landscaped.

That’s the beauty of an open house. All the improvements aren’t just good for one day. They are good for another 10 years! Or until the next open house, which unfortunately for us is one year from now. (I’m joking, Mollie.)

You learn to appreciate friends when preparing for an open house. We borrowed many items, and we borrowed their time, which is even more precious. Cindy’s brother, Randy, and his wife, Therese, worked almost non-stop for two days helping us get ready, then they helped clean up the mess afterward.

I never knew so much work went into an open house. I’ll never go to another one without tipping my hat to the hosts.

You appreciate good fortune too. The weather forecast for Sunday called for a 40 percent chance of rain, which would have put 50 people in our small house.

I thought of Lisa Cotton, who told me she had called her grandmother the day of her daughter Molly’s open house last year, and asked her to pray for good weather. The weather cleared like the parting of the Red Sea for Molly^’s party.

I thought about asking Lisa for her grandmother’s phone number. But maybe my grandmothers were looking down on me too, because after a cloudy morning with sprinkles of rain, the sky cleared and we had a beautiful day.

The real joy of the open house, of course, came with the friends and family members and acquaintances who attended. It was so great to see them all. Some drove a long way; some came from just down the road. It meant a lot to see them. And even if you don’t get much of a chance to visit—which you don’t—there’s something uplifting in just giving hugs and handshakes, just seeing those people and knowing they are a part of your life and the life of your child.

It was good for our son too, although he wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea of an open house in the first place. He did a good job of greeting people, of visiting and saying thank you and good bye. That’s a good skill to have, no matter what you decide to do with your life.

A couple comments stand out from the open house, both from seasoned open house veterans.

One was from Sue Breeggemann. She said that you don’t savor an open house until about half an hour before it’s over, when you can finally relax. That’s true.

The other was from Elaine Kiminski. I asked her how she could come to Noah’s open house when they had an open house of their own that night for their son, Jake.

Elaine looked at me like I was crazy, then said with her usual good humor, “We’re Polish.” That explains a lot of things.

Whatever your nationality, I hope you are having a good open house season.

Music and spaghetti are both getting heavy ~ April 30. 1987

David Heiller

A friend of our family called Monday morning with the urgent news that her son had a serious viral infection and needed to be rushed to Duluth for medical care. She asked if we could look after her four children after school while she and her husband stayed in Duluth at the hospital.

Of course, I answered, of course. Three children, and one teenager, we can handle that.

My wife called later in the day and told me to pick up a jar of spaghetti sauce. “The biggest one you can find,” she added.

“Do you need hamburger?” I asked, trying to hide my excitement. Hamburger in our house is a rare treat, and so is store-bought spaghetti sauce. I say that knowing my wife will understand that it brings back fond memories of my college days, Hamburger Helper and all that.

Cindy assured me that she already had plenty of hamburger on hand from our friend’s freezer. After I bought the half-gallon jar of spaghetti sauce, I thought about renting a movie for the kids. But I shook off that notion. “We don’t need the television as a crutch. We can handle this,” I thought.

When I got home, all four of the guests, plus our own two kids, were sitting in front of the television. “What are they watching?” I asked Cindy.

“Oh, I rented Pinocchio for them to watch on the VCR,” she replied. She’s no dummy.

The spaghetti sauce smelled wonderful, filled with chunks of hamburger. Cindy threw a huge handful of noodles into boiling water. We use whole wheat noodles, which are not your normal, white noodles. They resemble the color of a frog. They taste fine though.

But the kids didn’t think so. The oldest guest, April, ate hers, showing great courage and leadership for a 14-year-old. But Josh Sarah, and Lizzie nibbled around the edges, and put their plates down. Our kids, closely watching their visiting heroes, put their plates down too.

Normally, kids not eating their supper gets my goat. But this time it got my stomach. As I eyed those full plates, my stomach reasoned with my brain. I forgave the kids and ate the leftovers.

Three platefuls later my stomach started having second thoughts. Bubbles began rising into my mouth, popping and fizzing. I felt like Thanksgiving with an after-taste.

“Ooohh,” I said loudly in Cindy’s direction. “What kind of spices did you put in that stuff?”

“None,” Cindy answered in a triumphant tone.

When Pinocchio ended, April and Josh washed the dishes, while I cleaned tables and supervised. Dish washing is a great time to talk to your wife, or your kids, or your friends’ kids. But for Josh, who is teetering on the abyss of adolescence, it’s a great time to listen to music. He happened to bring some cassette tapes with him, 16 in fact.

“What would you like to hear, Dave?” he asked me.

“What have you got?” I asked with some reluctance. Nothing tells your age like talking about music with a 12-year-old boy.

“Let’s see, there’s Z.Z. Tops, you might like Velcro Fly or Sleeping Bag.”

“Too heavy,” April warned. Hearing a 14-year-old tell a 12-year-old that music is too heavy is like hearing a five-star general tell a four-star general that there’s too much uranium in that last nuclear bomb that rolled off the assembly line. I took it seriously.

‘Well, how. about Mike and the Mechanics?” Josh continued.

Where does he work, at the Deep Rock in Askov? I felt like asking. But I held myself back. Serious kids don’t understand a good joke.

“There’s Bon Jovi,” Josh continued. “He’s Christian. He’s totally cool.”

“Too heavy,” April warned again. Christian music, too heavy? Whatever happened to bongo drums and a folk guitar?

“All right, Scorpions!” Josh yelled.

Sarah, his 10-year-old sister, chimed in cheerfully from behind us, “It’s heavy.”

After a long list of other possibilities, we settled on Tears for Fears. Even I, Mr. WCCO-KDAL, had heard of them.

After dishes, they piled into the car and Cindy drove them home. I thought, “Gee, that wasn’t so bad after all.”

My stomach started to argue, but I wouldn’t hear a word. That was my own fault.