The terrible twos eternal ~ September 17, 1987

David Heiller

“Dere’s Pastor Judas (Judith),” Malika remarked in a clear voice as we walked down the aisle at church last Sunday.

“Sshh,” Cindy whispered, as we swing into the fifth pew. “You have to talk like this.”

“You have to talk like dis?” Malika answered in her clear voice.

“Sshh,” I tried, “no, like this.”

“Like dis?” she asked in that same voice. “Dere’s Pastor Judas.”

Malika at two: more at home in a tree, than in a pew.

Cindy and I sighed in unison. Malika had wanted to go to church with Noah, her four-year-old brother who can now behave in church relatively well. We knew we had to give her a sporting chance.

Malika squirmed off Mom’s lap, and walked to the far end of the pew. She eyed Mark Johnson carefully. Mark had sat down in the same pew with us, not knowing he would have been better off in a hornet’s nest. Then Malika stood up and grinned at the folks behind us, a pew full of teenagers. Malika squeezed past me and grinned across the aisle to the pews on the right side of the church. I glanced over to see Ann and Shelley Kosloski grinning back. Church hadn’t even started yet and she already knew half the people there.

Church began with Pastor Judith’s pleasant “Good morning.”

“Dere’s Pastor Judas,” Malika repeated, loud enough for the pew behind us to whisper a laugh.

While the congregation sang The Church’s One Foundation, Cindy and I passed Malika back and forth like a human football. We each got to sing the last line of the hymn, spying the words between Mollie’s flying limbs.

“Where’s the food?” Cindy whispered.

“Where’s the food?” Noah, our son, whispered. “Where’s deh food, Dadee?” Malika said, not in a whisper at all.

The pew behind us leaned forward to see what the food was.

I opened two plastic cups, mixed with Wheat Chex and giant pretzels. They seemed like a good choice on the rush to church. But as the church quieted down, our pew filled with the noise of tiny teeth breaking and grinding cereal and pretzels. The noises might not have been heard in any other room, but in the middle of Pastor Judith’s sermon, they sounded like someone cracking nuts.

"See me? I know that this is daddy's radio."

I could hear the kids in the pew behind us, breathing hard through their noses, trying not to laugh. Malika sensed her audience. She carried her cup of cereal down the pew, showing them to Mark. He smiled at her again. She took the hymnals out of their rack, and began to pour the cereal in the empty space, until Cindy reached over quickly and grabbed her arm. Malika dumped the cereal on the floor. The pew behind us swayed, as the kids there fought to hold back their laughter.

After the sermon and offering, the congregation stood for the offertory response. Malika had by now picked up and dropped and picked up the cereal—several times. Then she moved toward me, and tried to squeeze past, toward Ann and Shelley Kosloski. I didn’t dare glance to see if they were still smiling. Instead, I blocked Malika off with my legs. She knew she couldn’t squeeze by, so she returned to Cindy. As we sat down, I landed squarely on her plastic cup and half a dozen Wheat Chex.

In front of us, De Ann Zuk sat calmly with her son, Jonathan, nestled quietly against her shoulder. Jonathan was holding a plastic bag of bubble gum. He quietly worked a blue piece over with his tongue, showing it to Noah, who answered by grinding away on his pretzel. Jonathan Zuk is two years old, and he did not say a peep through church. He maybe was too busy watching Malika.

Ride the horsey, that works for Malika.

Malika squirmed from me to Cindy as we sang the final hymn Lead On, Oh King Eternal. “This is crazy,” I heard Cindy mutter. She lifted Malika onto her shoulders. This was like a march of triumph to her, Jesus riding into Jerusalem on an ass. The kids behind us couldn’t hold back any longer. Their snickers burst out like bubbles. I glanced up at Mollie. She was using Cindy’s head as a drum, and keeping pretty good rhythm with the hymn at that. She was the queen eternal of two-year-olds.

Noah was joining in too. He moved lightly from one foot to the other, in a quick, tip-toe step. “I have to go pee, Dad,” he said.

Church service came to an end finally, mercifully. Malika descended from Cindy’s shoulders triumphantly. We cleaned up the debris, the blankets and books and crumbs that by then had nearly pushed_, Mark Johnson clear off the end of the pew. People filed by us down the aisle, with cheerful hellos. The teenagers ducked out, trying to hide their grins. George Brabec stepped forward to shake my hand. He looked proud of Cindy and me for surviving an hour with Malika in church. Or could it have been a handshake of sympathy, as he recalled church services with his grandson, Jason, who was Malika’s most serious challenger for the Terrible Twos honor?

Cindy and I haven’t decided if we will bring Malika to church again next week, or whether we will wait a year or two.

The family that eats together ~ October 24, 1996

David Heiller

A column in the Duluth News Tribune on October 10 got me thinking.

John Rosemond wrote that a family should eat a minimum of five relaxed evening meals per week where there isn’t the need to go somewhere immediately afterward.

Miss Emma joined us after dinner. (I never used my 
whole chair Emma found this habit of mine useful.)

His point in the column was that family values and strength of character are built around places like the supper table.

He writes: “Unfortunately, too many children these days are growing up in the back seats of their parents’ cars, talking to the backs of their parents’ heads and eating fast food while on the run from one largely irrelevant activity to another.”

I agree with his point of view. It’s something our family does every morning and most evenings. We sit down together and eat together.

At the breakfast meal, it’s a chance to see what the kids have going for their day, or what Cindy and I have planned. It’s a chance to air a problem, or to tell about what happened the previous day.

The supper meal is the same. We talk about our days, tell how school or work went, find out what homework we have.

The television or radio gets shut off, the phone gets hung up, we say or sing grace, and a little peace and quiet settles over the house. Everything seems a little more settled, a little more manageable, when meal time arrives.

Eating together is a good time to get a feel for how things are going. Sometimes not a lot of words are exchanged. Sometimes we aren’t all it good moods. Someone might be angry at something or someone. These things often get worked out during the meal, at least to a point that is better than when the meal began.

Often when the meal is over, I slide my chair back and pat my leg, and one of the kids comes and sits on my lap. So does our dog, MacKenzie. It’s an irresistible call to kid and dog, and sometimes to my wife, when I pat my leg. It’s a good way to end the meal.

A classic example of after dinner lap-sitting
at Randy and Therese's house.
(left to right: David, Rosie, Collin, Therese, Grace.)

I used to see my uncle Wilbur hold his daughters on his lap like that, and I always thought he was a sissy. What an idiot I was.

Our kitchen table is the same table that I sat at when I was growing up. We always ate supper at 5:30 sharp. It was never 5:15 or 5:45. We were a 5:30 family.

There were eight kids around that small table, plus Mom, which seems impossibly crowded. It seems plenty full with four of us now. We had a bench on one side, which was against a wall, and being the youngest, I got stuck in the middle, with my brother Danny on one side and my sister Jeanne on the other. We always sat in the same place.

My oldest brother, Glenn sat at one end. I always thought he was lucky sitting at the end. It was the place for a king, and Glenn acted like a king there. He would watch our manners closely. He wasn’t afraid to criticize eating habits and sometimes he would grab or hit someone who acted out of line.

Sometimes a brother or sister would retaliate, like the time Jeanne dropped a pie on his head. She said it was an accident, but no one believes that.

Mom sat at the other end of the table. Next to her was Lynette, whom Mom had to feed because Lynette had cerebral palsy and couldn’t use her arms. Then it was Kathy and Mary and Sharon. Sometimes one of the sisters would feed Lynette.

Supper was a time to say a fast prayer of “Come Lord Jesus be our guest, and let these gifts to us be blessed,” and then to eat. I could never figure out how food could be considered a gift. It was just food to me, and usually pretty good food.

The extended family version of eating together. 
No children's table for us!

I don’t know if eating supper like that built character, but it sure built muscle. I remember one time we had baked potatoes, and I wouldn’t eat the skins. Glenn knew that a girl in my grade, Ann Wiedman, was taller than me, and he knew it bothered me. I guess I had talked about it at the supper table.

He told me that if I ate the potato skins, that I would soon be taller than Ann Wiedman. So I started eating my potato skins, and the skins of the other siblings who didn’t want theirs. I really wanted to be taller than Ann Wiedman.

Lo and behold, pretty soon I did outgrow Ann Wiedman! It was a miracle, which I attributed to brother Glenn and not Mother Nature.

The supper table saw a lot of changes in our house. It saw Sharon leave, then Glenn, then Kathy and Mary and Jeanne and Danny. They all grew up and left home. It saw an empty chair when Lynette died in 1969. And finally I left, and the table had just Mom to keep it company. She passed the table on to me. I felt honored by that, and I still do. If tables could talk, it would have some stories.

There was more than fishing on this trip ~ October 11, 2006

David Heiller

We hadn’t been on the water more than five minutes when Tom pointed out the flock of geese. They were on the Minnesota side of the river, and heading south in a hurry. Then another flock, and another.

Tom remarked on what a great sight that was, how lucky we were to see it.

Tom Roster, my brother-in-law, teaches about shooting and ballistics, particularly non-toxic shot. He’s famous, in fact. He makes his living with ducks and geese.

Tom Roster and the sheepshead.

Yet there he was on the Mississippi River last week, getting excited seeing all those geese heading to the deep south of Illinois and Indi­ana. We can thank global warming for their shorter and shorter migrations. Tom made that point, and I agreed.

It didn’t take much longer until we had settled over a wing dam. Tom found it with a depth finder. He said a fisherman is blind without one, but I had the feeling Tom could have found it with his eyes closed and in his sleep. He discovered it about 50 years ago when he was growing up in La Crosse.

And then he started catching fish, one after another. We both had jigs on, and minnows, and we both moved and twitched our rods just so. But Tom caught the fish.

He finally asked how heavy my jig was. I should have known that information had it on the tip of my tongue even. But I never have been good at telling an eighth ounce jig from a quarter ounce one. I showed it to him.

It was a 1/4 ounce, and he had on 5/8ths. We were in deep water; I needed more weight. And try to keep your jig straight up. Otherwise the minnow is lying on the bottom and the fish can’t get it in its mouth.

I took Tom’s advice, put on my heaviest jig, and kept the line straight down. Then I started catching fish.

It didn’t really matter though, catching fish that gorgeous Thursday. I told Tom that, a point he took in without a reply. But I meant it. I needed that sunny day on the river, with fall colors sprayed up and down the banks, and blue sky overhead, and not a computer in sight. Fish or no fish, that was heaven.

We moved to another wing dam, another Tom favorite. Not all wing dams are the same, he said as he cut the motor. Some silt over, some still have lots of rock structure, plankton, minnows, fish. This was a good one, he said.

It was one of those prophetic statements that fishermen and baseball announcers sometimes make, because within 15 seconds his rod doubled over. A good sized one, and a fighter. Tom finally brought it up and gently lifted it into the boat. A sheepshead, 7-pounder at least. A female, full of eggs, Tom noted.

That would be a disappointment to many fisherman. I’m one of four people in Houston County that likes to catch freshwater drum.

But that fish could have been a 60 pound salmon, something that Tom catches every summer in the Kenai River in Alaska. He was almost giddy with that sheeper.

“Why do you like sheepshead?” I asked, no doubt my voice showing some surprise.

They’re great fish, Tom answered, good fighters and they taste good. What’s not to like about them? I couldn’t agree more. That prompted a story from Tom about the time he mixed in sheepshead fillets with walleyes and gave them to Mom, and how she couldn’t tell the difference. That’s definitely a Tom thing to do.

We moved to yet another wing dam, and that’s when the big one hit my jig. I had it on for about five seconds, just long enough for me to say the word “Holy” Then my line snapped. That prompted an ending to that expression and then some. Tom cut to the chase and examined my broken line. He wanted to make sure that the knot hadn’t come untied. He might have thrown me overboard with that. He announced that it had broken, something I already knew, then asked what pound test it was.

“Eight pound.”

That was too light, Tom informed me, and I knew he was right once again.

We drifted over a few more wing dams. We talked and laughed, and sat in silence too. All good things. Tom called his dad, checked in on him to see how he was doing. “Dad says to remember to set your hook,” Tom told me with a laugh. That’s where Tom got his foundation. Good advice, the kind you listen to. And lots of river lore, too much to mention here.

Tom didn’t keep any of his fish. He seemed to take as much pleasure in letting them go as he did in catching them. I only took home a rock bass and two stripers. But like I said, the day was about more than fishing, as such trips usually are. I learned a lot about fishing and the river, but more importantly, I got to spend time with an old friend. That was the best thing of all.

Fishing with a master, Bob Dutcher ~ October 15, 1998

David Heiller

Bob Dutcher sat in his boat. I couldn’t see him. It was still dark, although the stars were starting to disappear.

“Hi, Bob,” I called out. I knew he was there, because his truck was sitting by the road, and he said he’d be there at 6 a.m., and Bob isn’t late, at least when it comes to fishing.

“Hi, Dave,” Bob’s voice answered.

I felt my way down the bank, to where I could make out the boat and Dutcher, and crawled in.

“Isn’t this a little early to be fishing?” I asked as Bob rowed us onto Mud Lake. It was 6 a.m.

Bob assured me that it was NOT too early to go fishing. It’s never too early for Bob Dutcher, Askov, Minnesota, to start fishing. Why, bass bite all night. So do walleyes. And you never know when you’ll catch a northern. They are early risers, like Bob.

We each put a frog on a hook and started casting toward the lily pads off to our left. Bob worked the oars expertly, keeping us just the right distance from the weeds.

Day broke fast and clear. It was a gorgeous morning. I had asked Bob to take me bass fishing. He likes to use frogs, and I have an unlimited supply of frogs at the pond at our house. So I brought the frogs and he brought the rest, including the expertise.

That became obvious very quickly. “There’s one,” he said, letting his line stop for a few seconds. I couldn’t see any difference in his line. He set the hook. The line strained. A good fighter, but not good enough. Bob reeled in steadily, brought the fish to the side of the boat, and lifted it out. It was a nice bass. About a pound and a half, he guessed. He weighed it on his electronic scale. One pound, nine ounces.

Bob put the fish back into the water and let it slip away. He’s strictly catch-and-release when it comes to bass.

Bob caught another bass, almost identical to the first. Then another. Then a two-and-a-half pounder.

I was fishing just like him, or so it seemed. But I wasn’t feeling the fish like he did. I felt a few bites, but when I set the hook, the fish wouldn’t stay on.

One time I thought I felt a fish gnawing my frog, so I set the hook hard—like Bob does—and the frog came shooting out of the water right at us. Luckily it missed us. I don’t know who was more startled, the frog or Bob.

He chuckled. “You’ve got to make sure the fish is on before you set the hook,” he said. Oh. Right. Good point.

Bob said he hoped I wasn’t jinxed, like George Frederiksen of Askov. Bob said George has notoriously bad luck, at least when it comes to fishing.

“Come on, Dave, catch one,” Bob said more than once as the morning unfolded. I knew how he felt. I always like my guests to catch fish and have fun.

But it didn’t bother me too much, not catching fish. I was having too much fun watching Bob fish. He seemed to do everything right.

I especially liked the way he released the fish. Try letting a 3-1/2 pound bass go some time. Bob caught one that size. It was a beauty. We admired it for a few seconds, Then Bob put it in the water. It didn’t respond, so Bob put it on a stringer.

After about five minutes, the fish started thrashing, so Bob took it off the stringer and let it swim away. Not everyone—including me—could have done that. My pride and appetite get, in the way.

Listening to Bob talk about fishing was fun too. He told me about some of his favorite lakes how he fishes them, what baits he uses. I felt like putting down my fishing pole and picking up a notebook. A lot of fishermen won’t share that information. But Bob isn’t like that. He likes to see people have fun. That’s why he wanted me to catch a fish.

David didn't get skunked this time! 
He didn't catch-and-release, either!

We talked about other things too, like our families, our interests. Good old small talk, the kind that fishing is famous for.

We watched many flocks of Canada geese fly over us. A blue heron took off from a bay. A beaver swam from shore. The sun shined through a clean sky. Wow, what a beautiful September morning. There was no better place to be than on that lake.

We finished fishing at about 10:30 a.m. We shook hands and Bob said once again that he wished I had caught one. I said it didn’t matter, and I meant it. The worst day of fishing is still better than the best day at the office.

I went back to Mud Lake the next week with my sister-in-law. This time she got skunked. I wish she would have caught one!

I caught a 3-1/4 pound bass. I called Bob that night to tell him. I didn’t want him to think I was totally jinxed.

I could tell he had been sleeping when I called. He had that groggy voice. But that didn’t bother me. After all, he had gotten me out of bed at 5:30 a.m. to go fishing. The least I could do return was wake him up at 9:30 p.m.

But Dutcher didn’t complain. I knew he wouldn’t. He was glad to hear I had finally caught a fish. He’s a fisherman, after all.

A wood pile time bomb ~ October 8, 1992

David Heiller

The time bomb is set to explode at our house. It’s doesn’t look like a time bomb. It looks like a woodpile.

But because the woodpile will fall down, I think of it as a time bomb.

David and his maul: the never ending battle to keep the wood box full.

Hopefully no one will get hurt. My woodpile fell last spring while I was on a canoe trip. It covered three bicycles, a garden tractor, and a compost shredder. I had to buy a new front rim for Noah’s bike. But it didn’t crush my children or wife, thankfully.

It took a year for that woodpile to fall down. That was a long stretch. I remember once when my brother-in-law and I spent the day stacking wood. He had to go back to college that afternoon, so I drove him to Moose Lake to catch a bus. I drove home thinking how great it was to have a brother-in-law like Randy, what a great job we had done stacking wood together.

When I drove into the driveway, the woodpile looked like someone had shot a cannon through it. Half an hour, an unofficial Guiness World Record for a fallen woodpile.

Our woodpile never ever looked like this one!
 I wouldn't want to use it!

There’s nothing like the sight of a sprawling, fallen woodpile to deflate your spirit. You work so hard to get to that point. Risk life and limb cutting down the tree and cutting up the wood. Drive the tractor into the woods, load the wood into the trailer, drive the tractor home, unload it, split it, all the while listening to your lower back do the Rice Krispie Shuffle: snap, crackle and pop.

Stacking it is the final reward. You get to make it look so nice and neat. Maybe you even crisscross the ends so that it stands without any posts. That’s the sign of a good wood stacker.

I plod along slowly, pulling at the pile every few minutes, feeling it start to sway a little at the bottom, feeling it tilt even more as it gets higher.

I can tell a woodpile that will fall. The one I stacked today will fall real quick. If you push against it, it sways and creaks. Unless we get some cold weather real fast, I’ll have a bunch of birch logs to pick up soon.

Cindy came out while I was stacking it up. She gently reminded me to move her bicycle away from the 8-foot-high pile. She knows my wood-stacking skills are low.

Cindy on the other hand is a great wood stacker. When we used to stack wood together, she was always rearranging sticks here and there, tightening things up, and the pile would be as solid as a wall.

But she threw out her back two years ago. Now she won’t go near a woodpile. (Or else she hasn’t forgiven me for conking her on the jaw with a piece of popple. One bad throw.) But she still knows she has woodpile superiority. I think she gets a perverse pleasure seeing mine fall. She even calls her friends and tells them. Last spring, about a week after the canoe trip, a friend asked me with a smirk how my woodpile was doing.

“Geez, does the whole township know?” I asked. That reminded me that the only thing worse than a fallen woodpile is someone asking you about it.

Time bombs are like that.

Getting lost is scary for everyone ~ October 1, 1992

David Heiller

It happened so fast. One moment Noah was there, 20 feet in front of me, heading for the crowded jousting ring at the Renaissance Festival.

“Boy, it would sure be easy to lose a kid here,” I thought. “Good thing it’s Noah.” Good old trustworthy, sensible Noah.

Noah might have fit right in at the
 Ren-fest with all the acrobats.

In about two seconds, I reached the spot where Noah had slipped into the crowd. I scanned the throng of people, hundreds and hundreds, sitting and standing and watching an old-fashioned jousting match.

I tried not to feel the butterflies that turned in my stomach as I realized that Noah was nowhere in sight.

“Where’s Noah?” Cindy asked as she and Malika caught up with me a minute later. She had a worried sound in her voice that I hadn’t heard before. Just like that. I hadn’t said a word, but she read my face and knew he was lost.

“He was right here a few seconds ago. He’s got to be right here,” I said in my most reasonable voice.

But he wasn’t. We looked carefully through the crowd of people jammed side to side and shoulder to shoulder. Cindy walked in front of them, up and down the first aisle, her worried eyes flicking back and forth. I stayed where Noah had disappeared, thinking he would surely have enough sense to find us again.

Minutes passed. Five, ten, fifteen. Time slowed down. Perceptions changed. Music seemed to die down. The sun slipped behind a cloud.

Noah

I tried to imagine what it would be like for Noah, looking up at all these big people. I felt dizzy and frightened. I realized it would be easy to lose your direction at a height of four feet.

Cindy and I didn’t know what to do. Should we shout his name, make a scene; disrupt the show and all those people? No, we didn’t want to panic. It wasn’t time to panic. Not yet. He^’s got to be right here.

Reason tried to prevail. Nothing’s going to happen. He’s right around here. Someone will find him, bring him back to this area. This is the Renaissance Festival in Chaska, Minnesota. He knows where we were standing, next to the jousting match.

We thought those thoughts, calmly, yet all the while the thought nagged somewhere behind it: What if...

Cindy headed farther out, away from the jousting ring. She was gone five minutes. By now 40 minutes had passed. Then I saw her coming up a hill. She was holding Noah’s hand. Both of them were crying.

We all hugged, big, lingering hugs. I can’t explain the relief I felt. It was like a weight was lifted off my back and chest, a weight that hurt, that buzzed in my head. Color came back into the air, into the bright costumes of the lords and ladies. Music started up again. Suddenly it was a glorious day at the fair.

Noah and his buddy Joe exploring
 the wonders of Walkie-Talkies

Noah explained what had happened. He hadn’t ducked into the crowd like I had thought. He had kept walking along the edge, thinking we were right behind like we had been all day. When he finally stopped and saw we weren’t there, he waited for 10 minutes or so, then did the sensible, trustworthy thing we suspected that he would. He went to a stand, and told the girl working there that he was lost.

“She contacted a person with a Walkie-Talkie, and he could talk to anyone with a Walkie-Talkie,” Noah explained later. Walkie-Talkie’s carry a lot of weight with nine-year-old boys, and with their parents. That’s how Cindy found him.

I IMAGINE THIS KIND OF THING happens fairly often at a place like the Renaissance Festival. There were 27,217 people there on Sunday alone.

I know of friends who have had similar experiences, losing a kid at a fair, or wandering off in the woods for a while. It doesn’t seem like such a big deal.

But I’ve never quite understood what goes on inside a parent’s head, until last Sunday. It’s not a feeling I’d like to experience again.