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