Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller “Sounds good, Mollie.” I can say that in all honesty because I’m the father of a girl who is learning to play the piano. OK, so it’s not a real piano. We’re still looking for one of those. It’s an electronic keyboard, the kind that can make all kinds of fake noises. Right now she is switching from the sound of a Star Wars handgun to something you might hear in the background of a Stephen King movie. Mozart she ain’t. But she’s already way past me in her piano-lesson knowledge. She just proved that to me. I asked her which songs she liked the best. “I have two favorite ones. I don’t know which one I like the best. I like The Butterfly and Bluebells of Scotland .” Why? “For one thing, this one has two of these ones that go together. Two and five and one, you push them together and four and two, you push them together.” She made a chord to show me what she meant. “Five one, four two,” she sang. “Two of them go together, like that. You get it now? It’s like tha...

David Heiller   A mother bear lay at the base of a big red pine tree in St. Croix State Park last Sunday afternoon. In the top of the tree sat three cubs. They were draped over the branches like little rugs on a clothesline, swaying in a summer breeze. My daughter and I stopped our bicycles for a look. A hiker had told us about them. “I’m going to go look at them,” Malika said. My heart was beating fast, but I didn’t say no. I figured she was bluffing. “Don’t get too close,” I said. Malika got off her bike, and walked five steps into the grass. The bear was about 10 yards away. I was just ready to tell her to stop, when she stopped. Something told her that she was close enough. I was glad of that. The mother bear flicked her ears at us. Her eyes opened and closed. Flies buzzed around her head. She seemed to be trying to take a nap. Maybe that’s why she had shooed her kids upstairs. Time to watch a soap opera. As The Bicycle Wheel Turns. We stood the...

David Heiller This is the time of year we all yearned for back in February. Breezy August days. Low humidity. Temperature in the 70s. Big puffy clouds floating like ships across the sky. The kind of day that puts a spring in everyone’s step, even when you’re working. Even when something goes wrong, when the printer doesn’t work right, when a customer is rude. It’s hard to get angry on days like these. Life slows down this time of year at our house. I think we are trying to slow it down, to make it last, it is so good. Our garden, our personal grocery store. Like at supper-time. You can’t rush supper this time of year, especially when it comes from the garden. You go out and walk around the beds and decide what you want. Potatoes, onions, beets, cucumbers, zucchini, broccoli, chard, kohlrabi, lettuce. Raspberries for dessert. Having a big garden is like having a grocery store in your yard. It’s always changing too. The peas are mostly done. The beans are just startin...

David Heiller Randy paused as he was about to hang the Duluth pack for the night. “Look at that,” he said. I turned my gaze to the camp fire. Two boys stood silhouetted against the deep blue lake. They were black shadows, talking, laughing, gesturing with their hands, totally relaxed. Collin, David and Levi in the Boundary waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The image etched itself in my mind, where I hope it stays, because it was timeless and full of innocence and life. We were on the second day of a trip to the Boundary Waters. The boys, ages nine and 10, had explored the island. They had caught fish, played in their tents, and eaten around the campfire. They were in kid heaven. It was good to see, reassuring somehow, because I sometimes hear old folks say that kids don’t know how to play anymore. Collin and Levi would prove them wrong. I had been worried that it wouldn’t be that way, that they and their older sisters and cousin would think this paddling and po...

David Heiller “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” the Bible teaches us. That lesson applies to everyone, even two-year-old boys who accompany their fathers to laundromats. Noah and Daddy in a much better pool of water. We have a washing machine at home, sitting in the garage, where the car should sit. While it waits for the handyman to get plumbing into the bathroom, the handyman washes clothes in the laundromat. Sometimes, he takes his son with him. The son, Noah, is at a stage known by many as the “Terrible Twos,” a stage that ranks second only to adolescence in testing human patience. Sometimes such 26-month behavior isn’t intentionally Terrible, though the consequences are. The laundromat episode was one of those innocent catastrophes. With the best intentions, I let Noah “help” me take the wet, clean clothes out of a front loading machine. We watched the red light flash off, watched the spinning come to a halt. “Now open the door,” I said, lifting Noah up so he could...