Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

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 ye...

David Heiller Christmas is a time of giving. Sometimes the gifts are worth money. Sometimes they are worth much more. Take the gift of a phone call home. I called my mother last week, without really planning to. I’d just received a letter from her, and had written recently too. But I needed to talk to her. I didn’t have much to say. Our Christmas plans, when we could meet in Minneapolis. She talked about the weather in Brownsville, the big snowstorm they had. Noah took the phone, and told her about his deer antler quest, how Grandma Marge at school had promised to bring him one. Then I took the phone again, lingering on small talk, until we said good bye. After I hung up, I felt better. That calm old voice from home carried with it some inner strength that I needed. Now I realize that phone call was an unknowing gift from Mom. How about the gift of a walk in the woods? We tramped down an abandoned township road on Saturday afternoon. Binti lead the way, sniffing for squir...

David Heiller SATURDAY, DEC. 17—A Christmas miracle in the making: Dee Zuk sits with nine children in the church pew, nine children under the age of six. At the front of the church, older kids are saying their parts for the Christmas program. They giggle and stammer and push and read from parts that they should have memorized. Director Mary Cronin leads them along, like Mike Ditka on the sidelines with the Chicago Bears, urging them to cooperate. But Dee Zuk has those nine children lined up as quiet as the proverbial church mice which inhabit Faith Lutheran Church. “Do you have a Christmas tree?” Dee asks. “I have two trees, one upstairs and one downstairs,” Laura Horton answers, sitting on the right hand of Dee the Teacher Almighty. “Do you have a dog?” she continues. My son, Noah, answers that he has two, Ida and Binti. Noah and Malika with their cousin Sarah during a family Christmas.  These were little kids at the time of this performance!  Extra cu...

David Heiller Dear Grandma: You’re probably looking for my annual Christmas letter to you. Practice for the Christmas program at church started three weeks ago. That’s about when Christmas starts for me. Noah didn’t have a part. He just had to sing four songs with the other third and fourth graders. But that was more than enough. It wouldn’t be cool for a 10-year-old to admit that singing was fun. Noah and Grandma Schnick.  David wrote lots of letters to Grandma when she was alive, and didn't stop after she passed. But his actions said something else. Like when he warmed up in the car going to church on Sunday by making up a song. It was something about a missing cat. Mollie joined in at the end of each verse, and harmonized on the chorus. Cindy and I had big grins in the front seat. It was a great song! We didn’t dare interrupt them, being from the   Land of Bland   and all. Mollie had a long part, but she didn’t have to memorize it,...

David Heiller The stars stood sharply in the cold Christmas Eve sky as Noah (nine) and I headed to Faith Lutheran Church last Tuesday night. I pointed out Orion, who stood guard over our mailbox. Orion usually guards the outhouse when I see him, but the season is moving, and Orion is moving with it. He’ll visit the outhouse in a few hours. I pointed out the three stars of his belt, the stars that outlined his broad shoulders, his knees, his sword. Noah liked the sword part. We headed up the road.   Α   moon just-past-full was rising on our right, like a squished orange. We watched it climb above the snow and brush. It would soon blot out the weaker stars of the sky, leaving only stalwarts like Orion and the Big Bear. The Bear arched above Couillard’s house, but I couldn’t see a bear. I’ve never seen the Bear in Ursula Major, but it’s hard not to see its more common name and shape:   the Big Dipper. I pointed the dipper out to Noah, and he spotted it...

David Heiller The missing shoes convinced me that Christmas is here. The missing wedding ring was the first clue, but the shoes convinced me. David and the kids at the kitchen table. The wedding ring disappeared on Monday morning. I had showed the kids at breakfast how shiny the ring was. It had been polished a few days earlier. Noah looked at the ring, then Μalika looked at the ring. Then the ring was gone. I first noticed it at work. I reached for my finger to feel the ring. It’s a habit I have when I talk to pretty women (like my wife). It was gone. All day my finger felt naked. We called the school, and asked if she had taken it to school. She hadn’t. We believed her, sort of. She knows the value of that ring to me. She wouldn’t give it away, or trade it for some Skittles, not on purpose at least. But drug addicts know the dangers of drugs, and still take them. That’s the way my daughter can be with shiny gold things. When we got home, we looked all o...

David Heiller Santa Claus came to our house on Sunday night, enroute to the homes of all good children. He left Shark Bites and oranges, Teddy Grahams and handkerchiefs, socks and scarves, and a book on the Minnesota Twins. I always knew Santa was a Twins fan. Oh yes, he left toys too. A moose and elephant for Noah, and magic wand, crown, and cape for Princess Mollie. Children have abiding faith in Santa Claus but on Christmas Eve, it did seem to falter a bit. We were sleeping downstairs on the hide-bed, with company upstairs. I put a log in the woodstove at about 2 a.m., the wood banging into the fire box with a thud. Noah must have heard that. He came padding down the steps and crawled into bed, pretending to nestle in. But soon I felt him move, and I cracked an eye to see him on his elbows, looking at the packages under the dark tree. New packages, ones he hadn’t seen there before. He looked wide-eyed at the wall where the stockings had been hung by the woodstove w...

David Heiller Dear Grandma: Time for another Christmas letter. My fourth one to you. The Christmas program at church went well, as you probably know from your balcony seat. Somehow things always manage to go OK. The practices were another matter. In practice, no one knows their lines. At the program, everyone (well almost everyone) has them down pat. A pre-Christmas program twirl. In practice, the kids sing so loud you have to tell them to quiet it down, to SING, not shout. In the program, you can barely hear them. Maybe it’s the costumes. Put a pair of angel wings on a kid, or a halo fastened to a bent coat hanger, and they act like angels. Put them in a bathrobe, with a dishtowel for a hat, and they are as humble as shepherds. Except for Timmy. First he wouldn’t say his part in practice. Then his mother, DeeAnn, tried to coax him into his robe amidst the roar of dressing for the program. He crossed his arms in front of him and started crying. DeeAnn le...

David Heiller My Favorite Christmas Danny and I were getting frustrated. Christmas Day, 1963, was fast approaching, and we had rattled every box under the tree. We had rummaged through Mom’s closet, stepping on her shoes, lifting her skirts and coats, climbing up to the shelf. We were following our own Christmas tradition of trying to find out what Mom had bought us. And we had struck out. Usually   we unearthed something, a chemistry set, a pair of skates new socks or mittens. One mid-December we found a six-foot toboggan behind the cellar door. It was a painful discovery because we couldn’t use it for the next two weeks, and had to act surprised. On Christmas morning, my sister Jeanne peered at us and stated firmly, “You knew it was there, didn’t you?” “No way,” we said, trying to save face. It didn’t wash with Jeanne. What a miserable way to get a great present. We loved it. But we drew a blank in 1963. That Christmas Eve, we tossed in our beds, Danny and I, long af...