Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller There’s nothing quite as exciting as the first day of school what with butterflies, teddy bears, turtles, and all. First day of first and second grade.  Almost bravado. First those butterflies, the kind that you feel in your mid-section when you do something new, something a little scary and a little exciting too. They swarmed inside of us two years ago, on Noah’s first day in kindergarten, and again last year when he started going full-time and Malika hit kindergarten. Now this year it’s Mollie’s turn for first grade, and we are again nervous. Every year it’s a milestone, carried by a flock of butterflies. We parents feel the butterflies as we answer the questions of our young. “Did you ever think you would learn to write cursive, Dad?” Noah asked on Sunday night. That’s a weighty question for a second grader. “No, I never thought I would,” I answered, quite honestly. “I remember thinking it was another language, that it wasn’t even English.” Suddenl...

David Heiller Monday night. Already I could feel the butterflies in my stomach, thinking about the first day of school. Not my first day. Thank goodness, those are done. No, I was worrying about my son. I was thinking about Wednesday morning at 7:20, when he would climb onto Dave Nyrud’s bus and disappear down the gravel road toward Willow River. The very first of 13 first-day-of-school photos Do people remember their first day at school? I remember mine. My mom took me by the hand, a block up Main Street to the red brick building. Mrs. Escar was waiting, grandmotherly smile, wearing a shiny green dress with little seahorses on it. Mom had her first competition. The next day, I stood ready for Mom to take me to school again, but she inform­ed me that I would have to walk all by myself. I wonder how she felt as I trudged off at the heels of my seven brothers and sisters. Now I know. Noah stood in the driveway last Wednesday morning, not saying much, just waiting patiently....

David Heiller The Great Debate is never far from the surface at our house. It’s a consequence of having two children two years apart. Throw in the fact that they are of different gender and opposite personalities, and some powerful dramas can ensue. Oh, those kids! Negotiation is one aspect of The Great Debate. A typical Negotiation played out last Sunday afternoon in the kitchen. “Noah, I’d like you to clean the porches,” I told my son, age 18. Just then my daughter walked into the house. I had to think fast. You can’t give one kid a job while the other looks on. “Mollie, can you empty the dishwasher?” I asked my daughter, Malika, age 16. It wasn’t really a question, and she knew it. Mollie started an immediate, barely audible protest. Noah’s radar went up. “Mollie do you want to switch with me?” he asked her. “OK,” Mollie replied, and the deal was done. Mollie whipped through the two porches, straightening shoes, sweeping the floor, giving the rugs the ...

David Heiller The cabin looked great as we moved our load of supplies in for a week’s vacation on Trout Lake two weeks ago. Carpeting on the living room floor and in the bedrooms. A clean bathroom, nice shower, no slime on the floor. Two beds and a crib in the kids’ room, and a big bed in our room. Cindy unpacked the food, putting enough for an army encampment into the refrigerator and cupboards. I tucked the clothes into the dressers, enough duds for an army encampment too, except for mine. I brought only three shirts, two pairs of shorts, and some socks. If I had packed the food, we would have had bread and water for a week. That’s why Cindy had let me pack only for myself. The two kids took off running the minute they hit the cabin floor. There were no bookcases to dodge, no mountains of toys or televisions or stereos. Just pure floor space, a small gym to them for running and falling. Noah and Malika ready for canoing Everything looked perfect. I breathed a sig...

David Heiller   Noah and I each grabbed an umbrella and headed outside for an exciting Saturday night at the Heiller house. A thunderstorm was heading our way, and we wanted to be a part of it. Noah and David News banners on the television screen had set the stage. Warning beeps sounded like the distress signal of a sinking submarine. Then some weather man with a real voice, a voice like yours or mine, spoke over the now-silent tennis match. “At 7:47 p.m., a line of thunderstorms was spotted on Doppler radar moving north northeast at approximately 18 miles an hour. This storm contains hail the size of Volkswagons. In its path is the city of Finlayson and the Heiller residence.” That’s what my imagination said at least. There’s something about a thunderstorm that is both frightening and fascinating. You hope you don’t get zapped. You hope the wind doesn ’ t turn into a tornado, or that six inches of rain doesn’t fall in two hours. You hope the hail doesn’t grow t...

David Heiller Wrapping "Baby Tato" in it's blanket  (a napkin), rocking it to sleep. Children go through streaks where they have favorite things, at least mine do. For awhile, Malika had her Baby ‘Tato", a huge spud that she carried around and even slept with until it started getting a little gamey. Now she has a pink elephant pajama bag that was given to Noah before she was born. We dug it out of the closet a month ago, brand new, but instead of stuffing it with pajamas and hanging it by her bedside, she brings it to bed with her. Noah has his tiger, a fancy molded piece of hard rubber, painted fiercely, with sharp teeth. It says “Made in Hong Kong on the stomach. He brings the tiger with him on car trips, to the beach, to the day care, and to bed. It is his security blanket. They also have a favorite television show, which we made the mistake of taping for them. VCRs are a great investment. I hope ours works for the All Star game. But they can ha...

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...

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...