Accident brings both anger and relief ~ January 12, 2005

David Heiller

“I’ve totaled the car and I’m at the La Crescent rest stop.”

That was all Cindy said on the phone last Wednesday night before she hung up. I was out of the house in about a minute, driving as fast as I dared on the snow covered road, down Hillside through Brownsville, up 26, through La Crescent, up 61, and to the rest stop on I-90. All the while wondering what had happened, and was Cindy okay.

I pulled up to a Wisconsin state highway patrol car; Cindy was in the backseat. I opened the door. She managed a smile and a look of relief, which I’m sure was mirrored on my face.

Then the story unfolded. It makes me angry just telling it.

The I-90 bridge over the Mississippi 
in good weather. I was going the 
other way and it was snowy and slick.

Cindy had been heading home from work. She had been driving cautiously on I-90. A couple inches of snow had fallen and the roads were slick. As she got to the bridge over the river, she felt a huge collision hit the car. Glass flew. She was thrust forward. Thankfully she was wearing a seatbelt. She is religious about that.

She pulled the car over and realized that someone had rear-ended her.

The driver of the other vehicle came up to the window. He was a heavy guy with a white beard, He asked if Cindy was OK, if she had a phone, Cindy .said yes, and she was going to call 911. As she did, the man got back in his truck and roared past her on down the interstate. All she saw was a big white pickup truck with a topper and the letters P.D.S. on the side.

A state patrolman arrived a few minute later. He said that someone had called him about the accident on a CB radio, and he had been only two miles away.

He called a tow truck, then waited for it to come, with Cindy in the back seat. Cindy called me. Then they drove to the rest stop. Cindy filled out an accident report.

We walked away from that one. Of course the 
guy who smashed into me was never found. 
We got a new car... it was RED, and it 
rode higher than the wagon.

After I arrived, the trooper showed me pictures of our car, a 2001 Ford Taurus wagon. It was ugly and sad. The back end was pushed, the window smashed and gone. It looked totaled, and that made me mad. It had been a great car, and it was paid for!

Now we are waiting for the insurance company to report on the damages. We are preparing for a big financial hit.

And we are totally disgusted that the driver of the other vehicle drove off. He no doubt had his reasons. No insurance or something that he did not want to share with authorities. But they are bogus in my mind. Leaving the scene of an accident is never okay. No excuses. It’s just plain wrong.

The police are looking for him. I’m not optimistic though. He could be a local person, but he could also be from hundreds of miles away.

But I guess the bottom line of the accident is this: Cindy wasn’t hurt badly. She has some aches and pains from the jolt. But it could have been much worse, and for that we are ultimately thankful.

Under the snowshoe moon ~ January 18, 2001

David Heiller

Mother Nature held a flashlight in her hand last week, steady like a night watchman. She guided us home from work with it, then waited patiently outside the door while we made supper and got the kids settled. Then she said, “Come on, let’s go.”

We had to listen, Cindy and I. It would have been a sacrilege of sorts to hear it and see it and then look the other way.

So we put on snowshoes and headed for the woods.

We walked side by side. Our two dogs bounded ahead, as thrilled as we were by this unexpected evening jaunt. The trail was packed hard from other hikes we have made. And they were all fine hikes. Even a 10-minute snowshoe jaunt is good for the body and soul.

But as the flashlight rose in the sky, this walk was pretty close to heaven. The moon played a part. It was so bright we could have read a book by its light. Experts say that the December moon is the brightest of the year. It follows the same high path across the sky that the sun takes in June. But this January moon challenged that theory.

As we left the field and entered the woods, the trees seemed to welcome us. They weren’t black and stern like trees on other nights. They were different shades of gray and brown and green, as subtle and warm as an old photograph. Their branches threw lacy blue shadows on the snow.

The snow. We have snow! It takes three dry winters to put an exclamation point behind that word. But it was well-deserved.

We wandered in and out of familiar spots.

Past the stump of the old maple that used to hold four sap taps. It fell down two winters ago. Past the spot where I cut the Christmas tree. Down the road, across the creek.

It was all familiar, even in its evening gown. We only own 35 acres. Our woods are two-thirds of that. But I know every foot of them, and that feels as good as an old flannel shirt.

At one spot three or four different deer trails cut across our path. “This is where I’m going to build a deer stand,” I said.

“Play banjo, play banjo,” Cindy chanted. She doesn’t want to see me pick up another hobby. We talked about this and that. We watched the dogs cavort around us. We braced ourselves a for the explosion of a grouse in the deep snow by our sides, but the grouse were content to lie still. Mostly we held hands and walked and listened to the night.

We could have walked to Canada. But our other life beckoned from the dot of yellow light in the distance, and we turned for home.

Across the field, so open and bright, an owl hooted a good-bye.

Same to you, I thought. And thanks!

Lots of rewards from wrestling ~ January 21, 2004

David Heiller

It was fun to write the articles in this week’s paper about the 1970 wrestling team. I think about that team and season a lot.

I was a junior that year, and wrestled quite a bit of varsity at 154. Bob Lange wrestled at 145, and Ron Meiners wrestled at 165 during much of the season. When the district tournament came, Ron cut weight to wrestle 154, and I was out of a job.

That was not a problem, because Ron was in another league, and that’s the nature of sports. You’ve got to learn to lose.

That might not sound like a good attitude, but it ultimately leads to learning how to win.

Bob Lange’s mother, Vi, reminded me of that. I found a folder full of old newspaper clippings about the 1970 team in a dresser drawer a couple weeks ago. One reporter interviewed Mrs. Lange after the state tournament, and she said, “These boys have won and lost and you must win and lose to be a winner.” I couldn’t agree more.

The Langes personified wrestling, a sport which has a strange mix of bullheaded independence and team spirit.

The independence is obvious: You get out in the middle of the mat and there is just you and him. No one to pass the ball to, no one to throw a block for you.

But those teammates are really a big part of it.

David was assistant wrestling 
coach in Stewartville in 1980. 
He loved that. (I never really 
understood the sport.)

That point was illustrated in another newspaper article from the Winona Daily News by Howard Lestrud in describing a scene from the Region One tournament in Winona. “Wrestling is oftentimes called an individual sport and not a team sport, but Lange demonstrated the opposite,” Lestrud wrote. “Teammate Ron Meiners wrestled powerful Greg Koelsch of Rochester JM in the match following Lange. During a break in the action, Lange sprinted from his seat in the bleachers. ‘I have to go talk to Ron,’ puffed Lange. He slipped by his coaches Leo Simon and Ed Ferkingstad and gave Meiners some advice. Meiners won 7-4.”

That was the thing that impressed me the most in those articles and in the present day recollections from the wrestlers. They vaguely remembered the individual matches, but they almost all recalled what a good thing they had going as a team.

And not just with their varsity teammates. They said everyone contributed, the people on JV, the guys in practice that never got the limelight—in other words, guys like me—and I could tell they meant it.

It was amazing to wrestle Mark Lange in practice, because I’ve never seen a person before or since with that kind of natural ability. He was like a cat, always perfectly balanced.

But it was more rewarding when I asked him last week what helped him get so good, and he said, “You did, Dave.”

Not just me, obviously, but me and Cary Wohlers and Mike Ellenz and Bruce Bulman and dozens of other wrestlers that slogged through the torture chamber of practice. Some of us became state champions. Others were decent, some barely so. But in the big picture, that doesn’t matter.

That’s what I like to keep in mind when I watch wrestling. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a joy to watch Collin Pitts gift wrap his opponents. But that 10-9 overtime loss by an average wrestler is just as compelling, because I know that guy has worked and tried just as hard. He’s learned how to win and lose.

And if he’s lucky, he has learned about being a part of a team, and he’ll remember that most of all.

The tale of the tractor ~ January 27, 1994

David Heiller

The Oliver 66 Row Crop Tractor quit working about a month ago, which sent me on an adventure that ended tonight.

David had many tractor adventures.
He did love having a tractor. 

I'm no mechanic. A long list of people start to tremble when I have tractor problems, because they know I’ll be calling and asking dumb questions.

But first I did have enough sense to check the gas tank. Plenty there. I cleaned the sediment bowl to get rid of any water. The gas lines were clear and running to the carburetor.

So Ι figured that it had to be an electrical problem. I called Jim Kephart first. I’ve been known to rouse Jim from a sound sleep to ask him tractor questions. Jim took a deep, patient breath.

JIM: It seems to me you’ve got some bad wires running to the coil. Did you check those bad wires? ME: No. How do you check them?

JIM: With a volt ohm meter. Don’t you have a volt ohm meter? Jim carries a volt ohm meter with him like some people carry, a pocket knife. Anybody who doesn’t have a volt ohm meter is a little bit suspect in Jim’s eyes.

ΜE: What’s a volt ohm meter?

Jim is a teacher. No student of his will ever leave Willow River High School without knowing what a volt ohm meter is. Unfortunately, I graduated from high school 23 years ago, and I didn’t have him for a teacher.

So I moved on to Pat Mee, owner of Askov Deep Rock. I like to spread my ignorance around. I told him I didn’t think my tractor had a spark.

“Do you have a volt ohm meter?” he asked.

Once we got past that hurdle, he told me to check the spark by taking the spark plug out and holding it near the tractor. A spark should arc off, he said.

I went home that night and tried it. No spark.

So I asked Marvin Shank, Pat’s right hand man at Askov Deep Rock, what to do next. “Could be the points,” Marvin said gruffly. If you take your car to Marvin Shank, first thing he’ll ask is if you checked the points. If you need air in your tire, he’ll ask if you checked the points.

“What are the points?” I asked.

Marvin explained about points. He told me how to check them. So I went home that night and checked the points. They were fine, but they didn’t spark.

Back to Marvin the next day. He said: Did you check the coil?” He had a tone that said: You checked the coil, right?

“What’s the coil?” I asked.

So he told me about the coil, and I went that night, and there was no spark from the coil

It must be the switch then, I figured. So I took the switch off and had Dan Zimmer at Sturgeon Lake Oil check it for me. The switch worked fine.

So Ι went back to Marvin. He told me to buy a circuit tester at Stanton Lumber. “Check the resistor,” he told me.

“What’s the resistor,” I said.

He told me about the resistor.

Then the weather turned to 40 below for two, straight weeks, and I forgot about the whole lousy thing.

Until yesterday, when my fancy Stanton Lumber circuit tester showed a bad resistor and bad wire to the coil.

And today, I bought a new resistor at Jenson Tractor in Askov, and put in a new wire to the coil, and sure enough, the Oliver 66 Row Crop Tractor started right up.

I had to jump it first because the battery was dead. But I know how to jump a tractor. An idiot can do that.

A good snow ~ January 19, 1995

David Heiller

It was a good snow, the five inches of snow that fell on January 10. It fell when the temperature was about 30 degrees, so it was wet and stuck to everything.

Usually this kind of snow falls in March, and it stays for a few hours. Then the sun shines and the wind blows and the snow drops in big globs, and by noon it’s back to normal.

But after last week’s snow, the temperature dropped, and wind stayed away, and the snow stuck like frosting onto every twig and branch for four days. It looked like God had reached down with a big can of whipped cream, and got a little carried away. This snow belonged on a Christmas card by Currier and Ives.

The snow brought snowmobilers to life. You could tell they had been waiting for it for two months. They zipped by on the trails and along the roads. They filled the parking lot of the Embassy Bar and the cash registers of Sturgeon Lake One Stop.

The snow also brought my son and me out to the woods for a 2-1/2 hour hike on Saturday morning. We strapped on snowshoes, and plodded over trails for half a mile.

We saw some interesting things. Noah spotted deer a quarter mile off. Some canine tracks crossed our trail. They looked like a dog, only much bigger. I figured they were from a lone timber wolf.

At one point the tracks came together into short leaps, and intersected with rabbit tracks. The rabbit must have taken refuge in the hollow of a tree; which was littered with its droppings. There was no sign of fur or blood, so the rabbit must have won.

Our snowy road. Another nice 
snowy walk from the house.

You can piece together lots of animal encounters from tracks in snow. We startled up a ruffed grouse on our way home. Actually, it startled us. I crouched and squirmed through the underbrush to see where the grouse had been. I saw its tracks, and followed them for 15 feet. Then it dawned on me that the grouse hadn’t been in this spot at all. Whatever was making these new tracks must still be nearby. I looked up just in time to see another grouse thunder off.

We didn’t need to see a lot of wildlife though. Mostly we marveled at the beauty of the woods, and the snow that clung to everything.

ON SATURDAY NIGHT the waxing moon was two days from full. There was a thin layer of clouds over it, but the snow on the big spruce trees still looked too pretty for words. It reminded me of those glass globes that you shake and snow falls and settles perfectly on the trees and animals inside.

Noah and Malika,
 Miss Emma and David

It was so pretty that I called the kids down from their bedrooms, and asked if they wanted to take a walk. A walk at 9:30 p.m. is a rare occurrence in our house. They said yes.

We went down the road to the culvert. Noah decided it was too spooky and headed home, thinking we would follow. But Mollie held my hand, and we kept walking, and soon Noah rejoined us. Going home alone was spookier than walking with us.

It’s a great sensation, talking and walking on a warm winter night, with a bright sky and snow all around.

As we neared our home, we stopped to admire our old apple tree. Some of its limbs have been sawed off. Others are dead. But every spring it blooms, feeding the honey bees with nectar and feeding our family with a fragrant smell and sight. Every fall it bears many apples.

And on Saturday night, it showed us another beautiful side. Its gnarled branches and fine twigs were black and nearly invisible, but each held a coat of snow. It looked like a work of art done in charcoal and chalk. Only much better The kind you get with a good snow.

Some cold weather thoughts ~ January 20, 1993

David Heiller 

Cold is relative. It always takes a cold snap to remind me of that. In December of 1977, we had a stretch of very cold weather, 20 and 30 below for a week or so. I remember standing outside and playing my banjo when the temperature rose to zero.

This past Sunday morning was like that. I shoveled snow in my bathrobe and slippers, after the temperature shot up to 17 below zero. That was the warmest it had been for a day and a half.

On Saturday afternoon, the thermometer rose to 21 below.

Cold~cold~cold

That was the high for the day. The night before we had minus 33.

Steve Popowitz went outside Saturday morning. He thought some people were chopping down trees in his woods. Then he realized that the trees were popping from the cold. Pop. Crack. Pop. Crack. It sounded just like someone chopping trees with an axe. It was louder and faster than he’d ever heard.

He had 35 below. He was trying not to boast when he said it. But it feels good anytime you can beat a friend in the How-Cold-Was-It contest.

There’s always someone who had it colder too. “Ed Pepin had 38 below, so we had at least 40,” Pat Helfman told me on Sunday. She’s telling the truth, as any fifth grade student can tell you.

Sure as shooting, someone is reading this column right now and saying, “Well I had it colder than that. Forty below? That’s nothing. Hey Lena, listen to what this idiot Heiller wrote this week.”

People love cold weather. It makes us feel like we’ve earned the right to be called Minnesotans.

Cold~cold days are good puzzle days...

We don’t brag about it, but it feels good to casually mention it. It’s the same feeling a fisherman gets when he’s carrying an eight pound lake trout, and he meets another fisherman. “Catch anything,” the one will ask. “Nothing much,” the other says, holding up his fish and trying not to smile.

Some people really earn their cold weather wings. I saw Pat Mee filling up Jean Lunde’s fuel oil tank on Friday afternoon. He was standing with his back to a vicious north wind. The wind chill was 50-below, which he acknowledged by turning up the collar on his coveralls. You know it’s cold when Pat turns up his collar.

Somehow, seeing Pat there gave me a secure feeling. He has an important job to do, and he does it, and you know he will do it. When was the last time you heard of someone running out of fuel because a Pat Mee or a Don Petersen couldn’t stand the cold? I can’t recall one.

...and a good time for a game of Monopoly with a friend.

School bus drivers earn it too. We trust them with our kids in the dark, frozen mornings, and they never let us down.

In fact, once people get accustomed to cold weather, life goes on almost as usual. Maybe they play a few more games of cribbage or Yahtzee. But people are still out snowmobiling and ice fishing. Kids still go sliding and skating.

I took an hour’s hike through the woods on snowshoes on Saturday afternoon. It was 21 below, but the sun was shining and there was no wind, and it was lovely. The woods were beautiful, pure and pristine. The snow was soft and powdery. Hardly any tracks on it.

I heard a chickadee call its spring song too. Phee-bee. Phee-bee. They must know something that we don’t.

Or else they are eternal optimists, like Steve Popowitz. He was going to split wood on Saturday afternoon. He had some big, tough hunks. They would split easier in the cold weather, he said.

Steve was verifying that old saying, that wood heats you six times: when you cut it, haul it, split it, stack it, carry it in, and burn it.

“Anything colder than 20 below feels the same anyway,” Steve said. Cold weather brings out the philosopher in Steve. (So do a lot of other subjects.)

I thought about that statement later, when I came in from the woods. My beard was white with ice. My toes were numb. As I warmed up I got a headache like you get when you eat an ice cream cone too fast. I don’t think I could have hiked like that at 30 below or 40 below.

It’s something to think about anyway. Cold weather is good for that.

Natural childbirth, breech and all ~ January 19, 1989

David Heiller

“I don’t put myself off as someone special.”

But in-the world of having babies at least, Coral Popowitz defies her own words. Coral, who lives west of Rutledge, has six children. The last three were born at home, and they were all in the “breech” position, that is, with the head up instead of down.

Coral, her husband, Steve, their children,
and assorted grandchildren.

In fact, Coral has had babies born in all of the four breech positions—kneeling, feet-first, frank (butt-first), and posterior. All were born naturally, without a Caesarean section.

What makes this special, for you dense male readers like myself, is that the vast majority of breech babies are delivered by Cesearean section. To have a breech baby naturally is rare. To have a breech baby at home is even rarer. And here’s a staggering statistic: nearly half of all births in the United States today are done by Caesarean section.

Coral Popowitz’s achievement has made her a hero to groups like Caesarean Prevention Movement of Minnesota. In fact, she will give a speech to that group in April.

Coral came face-to-face with the issue of Caesarean sections during the birth of Selina, her third child, back in 1979. Her doctor discovered that the baby was breech, and decided C-section would be best. Even while they prepped her for the major surgery, Coral rejected it, and pushed out a 10-pound girl.

Selina was a regular (and well loved)
Tuesday night babysitter for the Heiller kids.

During her next pregnancy, her doctor discovered that the baby was also breech. The hospital refused to allow her to have the baby naturally. With the aid of a midwife, Coral had Abraham two days before Christmas 1982 at home in St. Paul, breech and all. Lucas, two, and Mariah, six months, were born at home in rural Willow River, also breech.

Coral recalls Mariah’s birth vividly. Her water broke at 8:15 in the morning, and by two p.m. she was still in labor. Along with her husband, Steve, and her midwife, Coral decided that they would have to go to a hospital in another 15 minutes.

“I just have this tenacity-slash-stupidity,” Coral said. “I said, ‘I will have her now,’ and I had her now.” Mariah weighed 10 pounds, 12 ounces.

Coral admits that she is proof that Caesarean section births are not always needed. But she is cautious in her advocacy.

“It’s very difficult for me. Having babies at home is an extremely responsible position,” she said. “I’m leery of swaying people to do this.”

“You’re dealing with an infant’s life,” she said.

Coral’s choices were limited: either go to a hospital and have the baby by C-section, or have the baby naturally at home with her midwife. She chose the latter for two reasons.

“Emotionally for me, to actually push that baby out, it’s like I need that to end that bond I’ve had for nine months,” she explained. “It’s the culmination of that nine months. For me, I needed that physical release.

“Practically, it’s major surgery. I didn’t need major surgery to have a baby,” she added.

Popowitz also supports a resolution by lay midwives currently underway in Minnesota. Once 3,000 signatures have been obtained, the resolution will be given to Rep. Sandy Pappas, a legislator who has also had home births. Pappas will draw up a bill which would give parents the right to have the kind of birth they want. Technically, home births are illegal in Minnesota now, Coral said.

If you would like to talk to Coral Popowitz about this subject, she welcomes your calls. 

Life heats up with another kid around ~ January 9, 1986

David Heiller

When people live in the country, and have a young family, they welcome the chance to have playmates for their kids. So neither Cindy nor I objected at all to the request from some friends to take one of their three sons while Mom and Dad got away for two days of kid-less joy and skiing last weekend.

My wife and I both think it is good for our son and daughter to be with other boys and girls their own age for all the obvious reasons that most parents list: they learn to share, they can express themselves on another level with their peers, they can play together. Maybe they can even stay out of Mom and Dad’s hair.

Noah and his firetruck

Of course, experienced parents also know that these lofty goals don’t always show themselves in obvious ways. Things like fire trucks get in the way. Noah’s new fire truck, for example. He got it from his Grandpa for Christmas. This truck has two parts, a cab section measuring 15½ inches, and a ladder section, 23½ inches long. Included are three ladders, each with 16 rungs, and a crank which lifts one high into the air. Some small town fire departments would pay good money to have a truck like this, but toy companies know that only Grandpas can afford them.

When our friends dropped Matt off Saturday morning his eyes opened like moons when he saw that truck. He jackknifed it out of the corner with all the skill of a three year old, and was heading for an imaginary four alarm inferno in the middle of the living room, when Noah strode onto the scene. Two words sprang out of his two-year-old mouth, two words that have since etched themselves in my mind: “No, mine.”

“You have to share, Noah,” I reminded him. He has heard the word before.

“Oh, share,” he repeated, in a voice Richard Nixon used for some of his deleted expletives.

Matt moved forward to the fire. “No, mine,” Noah said again, moving to the front of the truck and shouldering Matt out of the way.

“I had it first,” Matt said, looking to me for verification. I looked at Cindy for verification.

“Noah, you have to share,” Cindy said. I wanted to remind her that I had just said that sentence, with no effect. But repetition worked, either that or the Mother Authority in Cindy’s voice. Noah backed off, and Matt put out his fire until it was Noah’s turn.

Matt and Noah

This scenario repeated itself more than once over the next 36 hours. The fire truck, the Mickey Mouse puzzle, the plastic chain saw, the cup of hot chocolate, the broken piece of plastic pipe, all became cherished treasures to Noah with Matt on the scene. Sometimes Noah would give in, or Matt would. Once neither one did, when the yelling went up an extra notch, and four hands clutched the blue Wuzzle tape recorder in a standoff. I stood there helpless, not knowing who had rights to it, till Cindy swept me aside in Mother Authority and said, “If you two can’t share, then I’ll have to take it from both of you.” Which she did. I never would have thought of that.

Despite all these Fisher-Price inspired struggles, Matt and Noah did mesh on occasion. I took them outside Saturday afternoon, and pulled them on the sled. They both agreed that I should pull faster, and run down the road with them, and spin them around and bounce them. They both agreed that I should pull them on a tour of the Clubhouses in our yard, namely the abandoned truck topper, the garden shed; and the sauna. They agreed to sleep on the floor in sleeping bags together, side by side, whispering and giggling in kid confidence as all kids have slept in sleeping bags and whispered and giggled.

The greatest meeting of the minds came with the sauna. I sometimes ask myself why I built a sauna, when we don’t have an indoor bath in the first place. But with Matt and Noah, I remembered why. Noah sat in his small tub on the top bench, while Matt got the larger tub on the low bench. I moved between setting a fine example by pouring hot water over my head and chest, rubbing myself with a pumice stone, splashing water onto the hissing stove, working myself into the frenzy that it takes to do what every honest sauna person does in the fresh fallen snow.

Noah and Matt playing in the snow.

Noah and Matt scoffed at first, in the way little kids do. They sat in their own tubs, and said things like, “This is my tub, you stay in your tub, okay?” When I poured water on their backs they said, “No, don’t like that,” but not quite as convincing as “No, mine.”

“All right,” I said. “I want you guys to watch me.” I moved to the door of the sauna. They sat in their tubs. “Come on, I want you guys to watch this.” Noah climbed down first, then Matt followed. I opened the door, cold and steam rushing in, as I rush out to a glistening patch of untouched snow.

I belly flopped down, then spun onto my back. I remember yelling and screaming and thinking, “I hope the neighbors don’t think anything is wrong,” then I ran back into the sauna and slammed the door behind me. As I yelled with cold and glee, Matt and Noah joined in. They weren’t quite sure what they were yelling about. But they had just seen a grown man dive naked into a snow bank. I guess that was enough reason to yell in itself.

From that point on, the sauna was all downhill. Noah climbed into Matt’s tub, I poured water on both of them, we all threw water on the stove, and even when Matt burned his hand on the stove door, the tears were quickly forgotten. We were having too much fun.

Matt left on Sunday. He probably still remembers the sauna, and sharing (or not sharing), just like Noah does. Dad remembers them too, and wonders when they should babysit again—or have another baby.

‘Wow, that was a great Christmas’ ~ December 26, 2002

David Heiller

The house was spotless for at least five minutes on Saturday morning. The great “Company's Coming” ritual was done: dusting, sweeping, mopping, cleaning, organizing, and many other little jobs.

I stopped to marvel. Our house never looks like this, and it really shouldn’t, because it would then belong to someone else and not Cindy and me.

Then company came.

Three more adults, three more kids, one more dog. Both entryways filled up with coats and boots and snow-pants. Cheese Nips and pistachios smothered the counters. Cookies, cookies, everywhere.

Lots of cookie, lots of food, lots of joy!
Claire and Therese.

A dog kennel went into the laundry room. Kids books took their place of honor on the coffee table. Games and playing cards lay on the dίning room table.

Soon a Christmas movie was playing on the living room TV, and music poured from the kitchen radio. Dogs barked. People barked.

Now we’re talking Christmas!

It happens every year, when Cindy’s brother and sister and their families stay with us at Christmas. We get ready for their big rush by bulldozing our old interior and constructing a new one. And like I said, we clean, clean, clean.

Then they arrive and the new house soon looks like the old one, and then some. Neatness has no place at the holidays. It’s fine for a dinner and small talk, for a quick visit and a peck on the cheek. But in an extended family where everyone knows everyone else’s good habits and bad, the house soon looks like a huge, human salad bowl, and rightly so.

Full and busy at our house at Christmas.
Notice that my brother can still read a book?

It’s the ultimate compliment when a person can relax at your house under such conditions.

I sometimes dream of a big house with spare rooms for everyone. What would that be like at the holidays? Probably great. But it somehow never happened for us, and I doubt that it ever will. So we all adjust to the smaller house and the clutter. We dodge the boots in the porch and dogs in the dining room, and we relax faster than it takes to think about relaxing.

It’s a temporary thing, and that probably, helps. No, we couldn’t live like this for an extended period of time. But we know in the back of our minds that order will soon return. And then when it does, when the songs have been sung and the house is quiet and the shelves are back to normal, when the lights are put away and the empty canning jars start returning to the top of the fridge, we always say, “Wow, that was a great Christmas.”

I hope the same can be said for you as you celebrate the holidays in your own way.

Happy New Year and thank you to all the readers of the Askov Amerίcan.