Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller Dear Grandma: We were sitting on the bed watching a Charlie Brown Christmas Thursday night. It’s a good show, with good lessons about people and Christmas. Charlie Brown can’t find the true meaning of Christmas. For some strange reason he gets depressed around Christmas time. He thinks he should be happy, but he isn’t. He thinks he doesn’t have any friends. Everyone puts him down. There’s commercialism all around. The kids and I were soaking all this up, saying “Yeah, you’re right” to ourselves. I thought of Mollie, who had taken a verbal beating from a girl on her bus. I thought of the Tickle Me Elmo doll, which some fine folks are selling for up to   $500. People can be ugly. Then Cindy came into the room and asked me to fix the toilet paper dispenser. It had come off the wall, screws and all. A toilet paper dispenser doesn’t just fall off a wall. Someone had to have pulled it off, probably by accident. “Who did it?” I asked. Neith...

David Heiller Dear Grandma, How are you doing? I thought of you last Wednesday, when I watched a downy woodpecker attack the suet in one of the bird feeders. It was in the midst of a respectable snow storm, and the birds were going crazy at the feeders: nuthatches, chickadees, sparrows, and Cindy’s favorite, a tufted titmouse. Tufted titmouse I remember how you used to like feeding the birds, and would concoct some fancy meals for them with melted suet and peanut butter poured into half a grapefruit peeling. Something like that. It seemed like a lot of unnecessary work to me, but I liked how much joy it gave you to cook it all up, carry it to the clothesline and hang it up with strings. Then we’d watch the birds gobble it up, just like that downy did last Wednesday afternoon. Snow really brings on feelings of Christmas, doesn’t it? I know the holiday is a lot more than that, we mustn’t forget it, but I like how snow slows things down a bit, makes us stop and think...

David Heiller “Christmas does not end on December 25—boom, Christmas is over. Christmas ends on January first.” Cindy sits in the next room, reading a magazine in the warmth of a wood stove and Christmas tree lights. Those are her words, spoken to a cynic with writer’s block in the kitchen. The writer can’t think of anything to write about, and it’s Christmas, for goodness sake. All he can do is sip at his cup of tea and devour a plate of cookies that he begged off his wife. He begged her not to give them to the kids’ grandparents, not all of them. Peanut-butter-on Ritz­crackers-dίpped-ίn-melted-almond-bark cookies. Give Grandma and Grandpa an embroidered hanky and shaving cream like when we were kids. Save the cookies for home. Cookies. The man at the typewriter sits forward now, the blur lifting from his eyes like mist on a river in the winter. Cookies, he thinks as he reaches for another hunk of almond bark cr...

David Heiller One sign of Christmas hit me at work on Monday, December 8. Hazel had brought peppernuts to work for our coffee break. I said, “You know it’s Christmas when Hazel brings peppernuts to work.” Peppernuts are like miniature gingersnap cookies. They are about the size of a nickel. They must be hard to make, because they are so small. Yet Hazel makes them by the hundreds every Christmas. I don’t want to go overboard describing Hazel’s peppe rn uts. Α man could get in trouble doing that. Besides, Hazel is still mad at me for going overboard about her in last week’s column, when I wrote about what a nice sewing lady she is. But you haven ’t really lived till you’ve tossed a fist full of Hazel’s peppernuts into your mouth and washed them down with a cup of coffee. Wow. My wife, Cindy, makes a cookie that always reminds me of Christmas too. They are chocolate cookies, chewy and soft, with just the right amount of chocolate. I still make Grandma Schnick's ch...

David Heiller The sound woke me out of a restless sleep early Monday morning. A big vehicle moving north on Hillside Road, going nice and slow, with a deep rumble and scrape. I had to smile. A snowplow. I followed the sound with my ears, then got up and looked out the bathroom window as it passed by the house. The ground was covered with white. Snow had been spitting down the night before, but I didn't have much faith in the effort. And in fact it wasn't a big snow, just a couple inches of wet stuff. A pre-plow walk in a wintry wonderland. But it's a start. Some readers might think I'm crazy to wish for snow. It's like wishing for bad luck or illness to some folks. But to me, winter doesn't seem like winter, nor Christmas like Christmas, without snow, Grandma's chocolate cookies don't taste quite right. The birds at the feeders don't seem as happy. The woods look bleak and gray. But add that white to the ground, ...