Saying goodbye to a best friend ~ November 21, 1991

David Heiller

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1991: It’s 8:15 a.m. My back is sore from digging Binti’s grave. It’s funny how soft the earth is under 18 inches of snow.

Binti is resting on the rug in front of the refrigerator. She likes that spot, and won’t move, even though it’s hard for us to get things. Back in the old days, we would have made her move, but not lately. She’s had royal treatment lately. After 12½ years, she’s earned it.

Binti and the family the day before we said good bye.

I could write a book about Binti. Most people who have grown old with a dog could. Now it’s the final page. She can’t shake hands anymore, like before when she would almost bowl you over with her big left paw. She can’t hear a sound. She won’t eat, not even canned dog food. I never thought I would buy a dog canned food, but we did for Binti about a month ago, when she started looking so gaunt. Now she won’t even finish a can. About all she can do is wag her tail, and even that is weak, not the old rap-rap-rap that used to echo through the house when we’d stoop to pet her.

Last night, she asked to go outside, and didn’t come back for half an hour. Cindy went looking for her. Ida, our three-year-old collie, acted just like Lassie and took Cindy down the road a piece. Binti was stuck in the ditch, in snow up to her neck. She couldn’t move. Cindy had to haul her out and bring her home. We sat her in front of the woodstove and covered her with two old towels. She still wouldn’t stop shivering.

Binti must be thinking the same thing we are. A snowbank, a veterinarian. Same difference. Her time has come.

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 13, 7 p.m. Doctor Frank Skalko found a tumor in Binti’s liver when we brought her in this afternoon. He felt her abdomen on the stainless steel table in his office, with Cindy and I watching, and said, “You’re making the right decision.”

We said our goodbyes then, Binti resting on the table, trusting in us like she had always done, Cindy and I crying on top of her. “You’ve known her a long time,” Frank said. Neither one of us could answer. Then he shaved a patch on her right leg and gave her an injection, and Binti rolled over on her side and closed her eyes, as if she were falling asleep.

We took her home and buried her in the waiting grave, between two apple trees. Noah wouldn’t come with. Mollie did, but ran home crying when I laid Binti on the snow. We didn’t force them.

Ida sniffed her old mentor up and down. She wagged her tail at first, as if asking Binti to play. Then she sensed that Binti was dead, and her tail stopped wagging, and she watched us lay her friend into the hole and cover her with an old blanket, then with dirt, then with sod.

After supper, we took out all our old photo albums, and found several pictures with Binti. The kids want to bring them to school tomorrow, to show and tell. It’s a good idea.

Binti's first day with us in 1979.

CINDY AND I GOT Binti as a puppy when we first were together, back in August of 1979. She was half Irish setter, half roving farm dog. I had just returned from Morocco, so we named her Binti, which means “my daughter” in Arabic.

She was like a daughter too. We took her everywhere, played with her, took daily walks, brushed her so that her fur shone. People would remark at how beautiful she was. That made us proud.

But she was more than pretty. She had good sense even as a puppy. When the kids came along, she accepted them instantly. She knew she had no choice, but it was more than mere tolerance. She let them scoot after her in their super coups, or pull themselves up using her long ears as handles. She never snapped or growled. When she’d had enough, she would stand up and go to the door, or move to another room. She was so patient and gentle, it always amazed me.

Ever since we moved to the Denham area in 1981, we never tied Binti up. She stayed close to home. Once she got into trouble by going into a neighbor’s yard. He threatened to shoot her. I said I would teach her not to do that. For the next two weeks, we took walks past his place, and I held her collar and told her “No!”

I stopped to see this neighbor a couple weeks later. “You must be chaining your dog,” he said a bit smugly. “I haven’t seen her around.”

“Nope, I just taught her to stay home,” I answered with an inward smile.

We seemed to communicate, Binti and me. When the sun would set and silence lay on the land, we would sit on the deck and gaze together over the field. Once a coyote howled from the woods so loud that we both looked at each other at the same time, with a mixture of fear and wonder.

Binti exploring in the snow.

Every winter, a day would come when I would toss a snowball or two at Binti. She would never run away. Instead, she would sit still and give me a look that said, “How could you throw that snowball at me? ME, YOUR DOG?!?” That would always stop me, and I would pet her and apologize.

It sounds like I’m giving Binti more human qualities than she deserves. Some people do that. I remember a lady when I was a kid who dressed her poodle in a vest in the winter, and would take him to the A&W every noon and buy him a hotdog. Someone ran him over one day, and a hush fell over the town like a person had died.

So I’ll admit to you skeptics that Binti definitely didn’t compare to a person. She was far superior. How many people do you know who trust you and obey you and forgive you, no matter what? Name one.

Is that why they call dog a man’s best friend? I think so.

If I could order a dog, like you order Christmas presents from a catalogue, I would order another Binti. No hesitation. She had a good life. She was a lucky dog. And we were too.

A spunky new addition to the family ~ November 2004

David Heiller

It really wasn’t fair, the way Randi Vick hood-winked me.

She had come to The Argus on Monday, October 11, beaming about a dog that one of her home health care clients needed to give away.

David and Rosie and her cauliflower. Rosie was truly an omnivore

“It’s a miniature dachshund,” Randi said. That caught my ear. My wife, Cindy, and I had been talking just the day before about getting that very breed of dog. My sister Kathy has one that we like, named Willie, and some friends from Duluth who had just visited us have one too, named Peanuts. Miniature dachshunds seem to lend themselves to spunky names like Willie and Peanuts.

So I told Randi to find out more about the dog, how old she was, what she was like, that kind of thing. Randi said yes, she’d do that on Friday, and let me know more.

I told Cindy about it that night. We agreed again that it wouldn’t be a bad idea. We already have two dogs, but one, MacKenzie, is 11-1/2 years old, and is showing her age.

Then we forgot about our dachshund dream until Friday, when Randi pulled out her bag of tricks.

See, Randi didn’t report back ON the dog, she reported back WITH the dog.

Our household of doggies was always
full of delights and surprises.

Her name was Zoey. She had long black hair, which surprised everyone at the office. Most dachshunds are brown with short hair.

Then Zoey pulled out her own bag of tricks. She rolled on her back, she jumped onto laps. She gave everyone a steady, friendly stare, and snuck in a lick or two.

Rosie, queen of the manor.

She ran through the office on legs too short under a body too long. Her tail never stopped wagging. We could not help but smile.

“See why I took her?” Randi asked. It was obvious. This was a special little dog, one that nuzzled into the hearts of four fine newspaper women in about 30 seconds.

Of course, I was not about to melt that easily. It took me at least a minute.

My co-workers all wanted Zoey. Maybe that was one of Randi’s ideas too. But Dawn has a dog, and one is all she can handle. Diana couldn’t take another dog either. Robin’s cat would not allow a canine in the house, even though Robin was so fond of Zoey that she started calling her Stinky Pants, which is the highest of compliments from Robin. Jane said dogs were not allowed inside the Palen farm house.

Rosie

So I took Zoey home that night. First I introduced her to our two dogs. They were not as impressed as I was. I didn’t expect much more though. Dog friendships take a while to develop, that’s the way it ought to be.

Zoey won Cindy over in record time when they met that night. Cindy was slightly surprised—bringing home a dog is not something I do every day, or even every decade. I think I scored some hard-earned husband points on that one.

Cindy’s brother has a dog named Zoey, so we decided to rename her. She is now officially Rosie. That name seemed to jump out as a good one. It has lots of spunk, like Rosie the Riveter, and Rosie Deters, and Rosie Papenfuss.

I know our Rosie will be a good addition to the household. She followed me around as I did chores on Sunday, and found two dead mice and a dead bird in the garage. She proudly brought them to me. I managed to take them from her, but not after a good tug of war. You have to like a dog that doesn’t give up her trophies.

No, it wasn’t fair, the way Randi Vick hood-winked me. But I’m glad she did, and so are Cindy and Rosie.

This song is a must hear for all lovers of dogs, especially of the sausage variety...

Dixie the Tiny Dog by Peter Himmelman

Cynthia's note: After this column was published, the original owner stopped in to see David at the Argus. He told him that The ORIGINAL name of the dog was ROSIE, but the grand-kids insisted it should be Zoey...

Take time to do it right ~ November 23, 1995

David Heiller

My daughter’s room is a mess. I’ve told her time after time to clean it, but she doesn’t do a very good job, at least to my adult standards.

I know what the problem is. It’s two fold. One, she needs a little adult supervision. Someone to help her find the boxes that hold her dishes, someone to help her organize her books and her doll clothes.

Malika was always busy in her bedroom.

Second, she needs time. My time. It will take some time to clean it up right. Her and me and couple hours of time.

Time. It’s something money can’t buy, something we don’t have enough of. And it’s something that is at the bottom of any job well done.

I sometimes find myself rushing from job to job and place to place, especially when there are deadlines like getting a story written before the paper is put to bed on Tuesday. Or getting in firewood before snow and the true onset of winter.

I bet you can name a few deadlines of your own. They are a fact of life, and they have been with us for a long, long time.

That’s what makes it so nice when you can beat the deadlines and take the time to do a job right.

I notice it when I start a new job, especially one of manual labor. No matter what it is, when I first start I am out of sync.

It's sometimes hard to jump right into a job,
unless the job is leaping from bed to bed, I suppose.

Like making firewood. It usually takes a half an hour or so before I get it right. I might stumble over a stump, or not bother to put in ear plugs, or use an axe when I should use a maul. I know in the back of my head that things aren’t quite right. I don’t feel good. It isn’t fun.

Then something clicks. I’m not sure what. If I could bottle it, I’d be rich. You could call it finding the rhythm of the job.

Whatever it is, it makes me slow down a notch, and do those little things that make a job go smoothly. If the chain gets a little dull, I’ll stop and sharpen it instead of getting frustrated with a slower cutting chain. It seems like a waste of time, stopping and sharpening that chain, but it makes the job go better in the long run.

I noticed it tonight when I looked at my daughter’s messy room. I want to yell at her clean it, and she’ll go through the motions of cleaning it for me. But it will look the same tomorrow night, and until I spend some time with her on it.

And probably it will take us a few minutes get into the rhythm of the job. Then we’ll go town, and we’ll do it right, and someday she’ll will do the same thing with her own jobs, and with her own kids.

How do you cope with good behavior? ~ November 9, 1989

David Heiller

The best laid plans of Day Care and Babysitter …

We thought we had The Plan this time. Malika, our four-year-old daughter (sometimes known as Mollie the Hun), had finally reached her limit.

Malika (a.k.a. Mollie) and her magic wand.
Maybe it was magic that made her behave?

Three weeks of not brushing her teeth, of not going potty at the right time or in the right place. Three weeks of throwing her brother’s mouse stamp in the wood stove, of writing with a magic marker on her forehead and on a living room pillow, of doing laps around Marilyn Edin and Becky Lourey in the Oak Lake Church basement.

Three weeks of sending her to bed, of yelling. Three weeks of Cindy and I wondering out loud: “What are we going to do with her?”

We brainstormed ideas. The Rack. Drawing and quartering. Taking her to Joint Powers Board meetings. Making her empty the chamber pot. Nothing clicked. Finally Sunday night, when Mollie ran from one last outstretched toothbrush, Cindy cracked.

“That does it. I’m calling Sarah.”

Mollie knew at once that Cindy was not idling her threats. She started crying, real tears. “No, no, don’t call Sarah.”

Cindy called Sarah.

Sarah was a year or two younger in this photo, 
but she had Mollie's number when she came
that day and that is ALL that mattered.

No, Sarah is not a snaggle-toothed hag from a B-movie clutching a chair in one hand and a whip in the other. She’s something much worse in the eyes of a four-year-old who loves her Day Care; she is a Babysitter. And a good one at that. Above railroading. Street-wise, school-smart, 13 going on 20, like all teenagers these days, yet young enough to remember the tricks of an imposter like Mollie.

So Noah went to Day Care on Monday, and Mollie stayed home with Sarah.

Mollie met us at the door when we came home. Her first words: “Can Sarah stay a little longer?”

“What?” her startled father asked.

“Can Sarah stay a little longer?”

Sarah and Mollie, it turned out, had become best buddies. They had played Maple Town. Read books. Cleaned the play room and her bedroom. Brought in firewood. Eaten ice cream.

“How’d it go?” I asked Sarah, peering close, looking for bruise marks, trembling hands.

“Fine. She took a nap from 12:30 to 3,” Sarah replied cheerfully. Mollie hasn’t taken a nap in at least a year.

So much for that experiment, I thought. Cindy had a different perception: Mollie had fun with Sarah, yes, but she was good because she wanted to go to Day Care. She took a nap because she knew that was the only way she could cope with being so good.

(How do YOU cope with being good? There’s a pleasant dilemma. Maybe we should all take more naps.)

Cindy may be right. Just now, Mollie has come downstairs to demand that we rub her back, a nightly ritual before she falls asleep.

Reading and back-rubs, all part of the deal at bedtime.

“If you don’t come and rub my back, you know what will happen? You will rub my back forever!” she hollers.

If ever there was a living Hell...

“We’re going to need a babysitter tomorrow?” Cindy asks her.

“No!”

“Then get to bed now.”

Mollie runs upstairs, bangs her feet on her window. “Tell Daddy to rub my back,” she resumes.

“Go rub her back,” Cindy tells me.

“Why don’t you?” I ask, not looking up from the computer.

“Because when I put her to bed, I said, ‘I’m going to rub your back now,’ and she didn’t want me to, so I said, ‘If I don’t rub your back now, I’m not going to rub it,’ and she said fine. You didn’t make that deal with her.”

Life with Mollie is a life of deal making. “Rub my back, Dad.”

There’s a lesson in all this, somewhere. I was just going to state it profoundly. But it can wait. Right now, I’d better go rub Mollie’s back.

A game of cribbage. Anyone? ~ November 14, 1996

David Heiller

“Fifteen-two,15-4,15-8, and a double run of 10 is 16.”

Grandma spoke those words and in a slow and steady hand, moved her peg 16 holes down the cribbage board.

Grandma Schnick in her living room.

There they lay in front of me, those darn cards, 6-7-7-8-9. I counted them for myself, just to make sure she didn’t miss any points. If she did, I’d claim them for my own.

But Grandma never missed points, and I didn’t either, because she would do the same to me.

Grandma and I played cribbage at the card table that was always set up in her living room. She lived upstairs in our house, and she always had the cribbage board out on the table, or on the buffet that held old photographs and a magnifying glass and paper and pencils and other grandma stuff.

The cribbage board was always waiting, just like she was, for a game of cribbage.

I played a lot of cribbage with Grandma when I was growing up. She always won a few more than I did. She was a little better, a little luckier. She taught me to lead with a four. She taught me to keep an ace handy for pegging. When I was first learning, she told me what to keep and what to discard.

On cold winter nights, she would turn up her oil stove and the room would boil. Grandma never seemed to get too hot though. I thought that it was always too hot or too cold in her house. But it was always just right for Grandma. She didn’t complain.

I loved playing cribbage with Grandma. It was a way to escape from the chaos of a big family downstairs. Grandma and the cribbage games were a refuge from that.

I think those games also formed a bond between Grandma and me that we couldn’t have obtained any other way. We didn’t have to talk much about current events or how our days went. We just played cribbage, and for some simple yet unexplainable reason, it made us a lot closer.

At times like that, I couldn’t imagine that Grandma would ever be gone. She was like a lighthouse. But of course that changed. I went away to college, then to the Peace Corps, then to marriage and a family of my own, and the cribbage games dwindled and died.

Grandma followed suit in 1989. (Pardon the pun, Grandma!)

Cribbage is passed from parent or grandparent to child. Here's my brother Randy playing with his daughter, Grace. They are using the nice board I gave to David on an early Father's Day.

Lately I’ve been thinking about those games and Grandma again, because we are on a cribbage kick in our house.

We play with a beautiful cribbage board that Cindy gave me about 10 years ago. She bought it at a Swayed Pines Fiddle Fest in Collegeville, Minnesota. It is hand carved out of cherry wood, with a duck flying in the middle.

Cindy and I will go for months without playing, then we’ll take down the board from a shelf in the laundry room, and go on a tear, and play every day for a while. Then we’ll quit again.

The nicest thing about this latest surge is that our 11-year-old daughter, Malika, has joined us. We play three handed. It’s fun watching Mollie learn the game. It reminds me of my games with Grandma. We have to be patient with Malika, and it makes me think Grandma must have been patient with me. But I never noticed it.

It makes me wish Mollie had a Grandma Schnick living upstairs where she could go for a game of cribbage. In the meantime, we’ll keep playing.

“Fifteen-8 and 8 is sixteen,” I told Grandma triumphantly. I laid down the cards: five of hearts, ten of diamonds, jack of clubs, jack of hearts, queen of spades, and the card she had cut, the six of hearts. I looked over the cards to make sure I hadn’t missed any points, and marched my peg toward the finish line.

“You forgot Nobs,” Grandma said, and took the last point.

“Grandma!” I said with a laugh. Then we played another game.

A lot for which to live ~ November 7, 1991

David Heiller

The wind was blowing hard out of the northwest last Friday afternoon, carrying snow like little bullets against our faces. Already, about 16 inches of snow lay on the ground.

Malika and I were playing in it, after nearly going crazy with cabin fever for much of the day. First I made a snow angel, which Mollie promptly trudged through with a wild, cabin fever laugh. Then I dove through the air and landed on my back in a big drift.

Noah

Mollie went off to make more snow angels. I lay there, out of the wind, feeling the snow tickle my face, feeling the soft bed of snow underneath, feeling quite comfortable.

Then a memory flashed into my mind. No, something more powerful than a memory, a sensation that made my face quiver first with fear, then with anger.

It had happened in November of 1973. I had been backpacking in Yosemite National Park in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. A blizzard had caught me there, unprepared and alone, 20-plus miles from park headquarters.

The storm lasted all day Saturday and Sunday. The wind blasted my pup tent, even in the pine trees where I had set up. Snow pressed in on the sides like a torture chamber from an Edgar Allen Poe story. My dire predicament stared at me like an ugly sore. I was cold, stranded, alone, and no one knew where I was. What little sleep I got was filled with nightmares. I thought constantly of family, friends, Camp Courage. And I was scared, very scared.

The storm ended Monday morning. I crawled from my tent into a new world. The ground had been bare on Saturday. Now snow lay everywhere, lots of snow. But that wouldn't stop me! I hastily packed everything, threw the 50-pound pack on my back, and started hiking.

Malika

As I left the protection of the pines, every step got deeper. Finally I hit a hole that sucked me up to my waist. I could barely move. I struggled for a few seconds, then relaxed. The snow was comfortable, like a water bed. The weight of the pack was gone.

For a few moments, I felt like staying right there. I was cold and numb, yet strangely at rest.

I felt like falling asleep. It would be so easy. That would get me out of this fix. But something stopped me. Something made me pull myself from the snow drift and trudge back to the pines, and set the tent up, and struggle for the next 17 days to make my way back to civilization.

What was that something? I don't know, but I saw it in that snowbank. It wasn't a vision of death, or a single revelation. It was more a mixture: of fear of death, of loved ones, of anger because I did not want to give up. In that instant I realized that I had too much to live for.

I haven't thought about all this for about 18 years, but lying in the snow last Friday, with my mind relaxed, the experience returned.

Then Mollie came plowing on top of me, and reality returned and the memories were gone, maybe for another 18 years.

A lot has happened in that time span, mostly good, some bad, mostly happy, some sad. But looking at my daughter's smiling face in the falling snow last Friday, I realized, for the umpteenth time, that I do indeed have a lot for which to live.

The first snowfall of the season ~ November 5, 1992

David Heiller

There’s something in the first snowfall of the season that brings out joy and wonder. You hear about it on the radio, and even the announcer’s voice is urgent, excited. You step outside and feel the wet, chilly air, see the low clouds, and you smile inside.

Then snow fills the air, and you know it’s going to last, and you want to curl up in a quilt, maybe grab a book and a cup of coffee, maybe grab a nap. Bears are thinking the same thing in the woods, with the first snowfall.

As snow coats the ground, the house fills up with a special light, soft and bright at the same time from all that whiteness outside reflecting in. Thoughts from childhood come back like they do every year. The excitement of snow. The anticipation of sledding, of making snowmen, of missing school, of seeing Mother Nature change her clothes before your very eyes.

You notice the dog lying in front of the woodstove, her coat thick and glossy, and with the snow falling outside, you are happy to see the dog there. She belongs in that spot.

Noah and Dan and a rousing game of Monopoly.

You break out the Monopoly game at the kitchen table, and play with the kids. Monopoly was meant to be played on a snowy Sunday afternoon.

You go outside to bring in wood for the woodstove. The wood feels good in your arms. You realize for the first time that all of the cuttίng and splitting and stacking has paid off. Oh, that white oak feels good when you carry it in! It will feel even better when it heats the house.

Outside, your senses are sharpened as snowflakes fly like sparks off a grinding wheel. You notice that the wind is from the northeast. You turn your collar against it, and hunch your shoulders. You turn your eyes to the dull skies and wonder if this storm will bring three inches or 33 inches. You never know about the first snow fall, and that makes it all the more exciting. Out in the woods, the coyotes and deer are doing the same thing, lifting their faces to the clouds, wondering at it all with animal instincts that we can’t understand except for this one.

Night falls. The cat crawls up on the couch and lies on the socks you are folding. That’s O.K. You smile, like she seems to smile, because the first snow is falling outside.

Wintery days

You go to bed and hear the creaking of the branches as they coat with snow. They scratch the house like bony fingers. The kettle of water on the woodstove boils over a drop. It hits with a hiss, and you look up at this unfamiliar sound.

In the morning, the snow is still falling. Four inches lie on the ground, heavy and wet like the first snowfall often is. The kids eat and dress and throw on their snowsuits for the first time in seven months. They rush outside, forgetting to wash their faces and brush their teeth. They quickly roll a big ball of snow, heavier than they are, and then another, and fetch their dad to lift it onto the bottom one, which he does with a groan and a smile. Those old childhood memories come back again.

THE FIRST SNOWFALL will soon pass. So will all these notions. Then the soft white light won’t be so special. The wood will feel heavy in your arms, and you’ll notice the mess it leaves around the woodbox. You’ll get used to the hissing woodstove, and won’t hear the trees outside at night. Your eyes won’t turn to the sky with the same sense of wonder, and you might even cuss a spell when the roads pile up with more wet, slippery snow.

But not yet, not until you welcome with joy the first snowfall.

Single parenting: a learning experience ~ November 9, 1995

David Heiller

I’m a single dad these days. My wife, Cindy, has gone away to help her mom recover from cancer surgery.

Her absence makes me appreciate many things.

David and I were partners, which made my many weeks away from my family so very
hard. Funny, there are really no photos from that fall. 
We all survived with lots of love and understanding. Well, maybe not the house!

When I think about how hard it is being a single parent, I think back to my own childhood. My dad died four months before I was born, so Mom raised us eight kids by herself and with the help of her mother, who lived upstairs.

I can’t get Mom to reminisce about those good old days much, maybe because they weren’t so good. But when she does, she always mentions how Grandma was there to help, how she couldn’t have done it without her.

Lately I’ve been thinking about Cindy in the similar manner. I couldn’t do this single parent thing very well.

Our family life has evolved into certain patterns, and those patterns are all askew now. For example, Cindy supervises the kids’ homework, and now I’m doing that. It’s a lot of work, but I like it.

It’s a good time to sit face to face with the kids and go over any problems they are having in math, or to help them review social studies for a test. We often talk about other things at that time too.

Cindy makes them practice their instruments, and I’m doing that. Well, some of the time. I don’t always remind them to practice, and they don’t remind me to remind them, although Noah did remind me to remind Mollie to prac­tice her piano. Funny, he didn’t remind me to remind him to practice his trombone.

I’m now in charge of rousting them up in the morning at 6:15, and making breakfast and seeing that their teeth and hair are brushed, their faces washed (and is Mollie’s hair dirty?), and making sure their school bags are packed without any forgotten gloves or books, and making them cold lunch if they want it, and getting them on the bus at 7:15. Whew. It’s tiring just thinking about it.

I’m in charge of cleaning, which has suffered the most. I’m getting a glimpse of what our house would look like if I wasn’t married. It isn’t pretty. I call it the Norwegian Bachelor Farmer look. Everything appears all right, if you aren’t wearing your glasses. On closer look… Well, don’t take a closer look.

I’m in charge of supper, of which I can prepare one meal: eggs and potatoes and onions all mixed together in a frying pan with a pound of butter. I raided the garden one night for brussel sprouts. That was a big improvement. Yeah right, Dad.

Fortunately for the kids, and for me, people have sensed my dire cooking straits and sent home some fabulous food, like soup and spaghetti and tapioca pudding and meatloaf and bread and rolls and coffee cake and banana bread and cookies.

You see a lot of kindness in emergencies like ours. One friend even sent a note from her winter home in Arizona. “If I were home, I’d have cooked some fattening thing for Dave to take home for supper,” she wrote. “Thank you for sharing your sad news, giving people like me (us) an opportunity to pass on some of the kind­ness shown us in the past.”

That kindness is much appreciated.

Family photo.

The kids have taken on more responsibility in Cindy’s absence. Chores that Cindy and I might have done before, like washing dishes or vacuuming or folding laundry, they are now being asked to do, and they aren’t complaining about it. They know there are only 24 hours in a day, and that I can’t do it all. They know their grandma is sick, and that their mother is gone, because they miss her very much.

As do I. Cindy and I call each other two or three times a day, just to check in. I’m not much of a phone talker. The silences that come in a normal conversation don’t translate well for me over the phone. But it’s different talking to Cindy.

We tell each other about our days, about something the kids said, some incident from work, or how the tractor worked in the woods. It’s idle conversation that we might normally have over a game of Scrabble, or while riding to work together. But now nothing is normal, so we chat on the phone.

I’ve got a hunch that things will return to their old routines soon enough. Cindy will be heading home this week, I hope. In the meantime, it’s been a learning experience for everyone, and a time to appreciate what we often take for granted.

When Tooth Fairies call ~ November 8, 1990

David Heiller

The Tooth Fairy has been visiting our house lately, and the kids are laughing all the way to the piggy bank.

Malika and Noah are all grown up now and
they carved these two pumpkins.
 But gosh, they do LOOK familiar!

Their smiles have enough gaps to serve as models for pumpkin carvers, but they don’t care about that. They’re getting richer by the tooth.

I heard one mother telling about her son a while back that he wanted to pretend to put a tooth under the pillow every night, so their family could have lots of money. She had to laugh and explain in child language that life isn’t that easy.

At first Noah and Mollie looked at a loose tooth as a red badge of courage. They would work them for days, sometimes weeks, like they were playing an eight pound lake trout in the Boundary Waters. They would twist and wiggle, push and pull at the tooth, until nothing but a thread seemed to be holding it.

Then Mom and Dad would be invited to try. That’s a rare privilege, when you think about it: Would YOU let someone put his fingers in your mouth to wiggle a tooth?

Noah asked me for help on his first loose tooth a few months ago, while Cindy was napping in the bedroom. My approach had shades of the Dark Ages, or at least the depths of the 1950s. I took some thread from the junk drawer, intending to tie one end to the tooth, and the other to a doorknob. My brother Glenn worked this on me successfully when I was about six. I could never figure out why he laughed so gleefully as he slammed the door shut and my tooth came shooting out of my mouth. I didn’t laugh, but I did trust my big brother.

Luckily for Noah, I couldn’t get a good knot on his tooth. So I got the Vice Grips out of the tool drawer. “Are you SURE that will work?” Noah asked, a worried look on his face. His trust was wavering. “Sure,” I said in a voice that didn’t sound so sure. But Glenn had used pliers on me; surely a Vice Grips was a step forward.

Luckily again for Noah, Cindy heard this conversation, and sensed with mother instinct that Dad was in over his head. So she called him in to the bed, and after about 10 minutes of wiggling, had a tiny tooth to show for her patience.

Since then, both Noah and Mollie have learned how to pull a tooth out on their own. It’s no big deal any more. We’ll be sitting around the living room, and all of a sudden, Mollie will give a happy yell and, bloody but unbowed, show us a little tooth.

Then there’s question of payment. Some of you old-timers will no doubt remember when you got a penny for a lost tooth from the Tooth Fairy. But when Noah’s friend, Joey, informed Noah that he got a DOLLAR for his tooth, I couldn’t help but give his dad a dirty look.

I got a dime for my last lost tooth, way back when. I was thinking maybe a quarter now, what with cost-of-dental increases and all. But with Joey’s free-spending-liberal Tooth Fairy looming, ours had to come up at least another quarter. So we settled on 50 cents.

I shouldn’t complain, because once all the permanent teeth are in, you don’t get a second chance. The next time they come out, it’s against our will. They stay out. And we pay the Tooth Fairy back in spades with every trip to the dentist. Fifty cents seems like a real bargain in comparison.

And those four-bit sojourns on tip-toe to the bedroom aren’t so bad. You reach under the pillow, find a Kleenex folded carefully around a tiny bit of tooth, so small you almost lose it. Then you slip a couple coins in the Kleenex and put it back under the pillow. You can’t help but smile and gaze for a moment at the sleeping beauty, no-teeth-and-all, having complete trust in some one as ephemeral as the Tooth Fairy.

Yeah, it’s just the Tooth Fairy. But when was the last time you had complete trust in anything? Probably back about that age. And in the morning, to see their glee at finding the money, just like they knew they would...

Come to think of it, that Tooth Fairy is worth every penny.

~After David died, the little container of little teeth was in his top dresser drawer.~chg