Another side of Mrs. Spinner ~ June 29, 1995

David Heiller

Last week my mother sent me an obituary of Doris Margaret Spinner of New Albin, Iowa who died on June 8, 1995, at age 81.

She was known as Mrs. Spinner by most of the kids in Brownsville, where I grew up. She taught grades five and six there for 20 years.

Malika, Brooke (Jeanne's daughter), and Noah
playing school in one the Brownsville classrooms,
turned local history room. 

My sister, Jeanne, remembered Mrs. Spinner well. “To me she was a wonderful teacher,” Jeanne said on June 23 from her home in Klamath Falls, Oregon.

“She explained things real well. She put a lot of her own wisdom into her teaching. She had a lot of patience. You could tell she was a mother and a teacher. She would mention her own children and experiences. She had that caring side.

“We never had a substitute. In those days she was always there. I just felt she was a warm, caring person.”

“She didn’t have any favorites. She was fair. She just had all the qualities you have in a good teacher. She might have been strict, but she was positive.”

Noah and Malika are playing on the swing set outside 
of the Brownsville school house.

Jeanne said things were different when she went to school than they are today. I agree. For example, I was the only kid in my class who didn’t have a father. Everyone else had a mom and dad. There were no broken homes, no divorces, and no students with special needs. That’s not the case today. I think teaching is harder now.

Jeanne wished she had written to Mrs. Spin­ner before she died, to tell her what a good teacher she was. I think a lot of folks feel that way. Teachers need to know that they have a positive effect on people’s lives, even if they don’t always hear a thank you.

Mrs. Spinner was one of my favorite teachers too. She had a split classroom, grades five and six, with about 36 students altogether, but she was always in control.

My mom had a poem about four of the teachers at Brownsville, Mrs. Sauer, Mrs. Boettcher, Mrs. Colleran, and Mrs. Spinner. She would watch them drive past the house on their way to school. Her poem went:

Mrs. Sweet went up the street,

Mrs. Boettcher couldn’t catch her,

Mrs. Colleran stood there hollering,

But Mrs. Spinner was the winner.

She was a winner of a teacher.

I still remember one incident that showed a side of her that we hadn’t seen before. I was in sixth grade, so it must have been 1964 or 1965. I even remember where I was sitting.

This was probably taken one
of the years David was in
Mrs. Spinner's classroom.

One morning there was a knock on the door. Mrs. Spinner opened the door, and there stood a young man in a Marine uniform. He didn’t say a word. Mrs. Spinner’s face changed from anger to shock to joy in about two seconds.

Then she gave him a big hug, and a big kiss.

It was her son, Robert, who was in the Marine Corps. He was stationed in Okinawa, and was part of the blockade of the Gulf of Tonkin. Mrs. Spinner had been worried about him, and that worry transformed itself into joy before our very eyes.

I called Robert, who now lives in Topeka, Kansas, on June 23 to see if he remembered this incident. He did.

“I knocked on the door and mother turned around and looked at me like, ‘Mister, what are you doing in my classroom.’ She thought I was a policeman, I believe, bothering her school.”

He doesn’t remember the kiss, but I do. The thought of Mrs. Spinner kissing someone, even her son, had never crossed our minds. Her emo­tional greeting of Bob gave us all a new respect for her. It sent a tingle up my spine then, and it still does.

Bob, 50, told me a few more things that I didn’t know about Mrs. Spinner. She was mar­ried at age 16, so didn’t finish high school until 27 years later, after her six children were mostly grown. Then she went back to New Albin High School, and graduated in 1959, the same year as her son, James.

This was before the days of alternate schools, so she studied mostly at home and met with her teachers once a week. She didn’t want to embarrass her children.

“She knew all the teachers. She was probably older than most of the teachers anyway,” Bob said.

I told Bob I didn’t know this about his mother. “She had two lives,” he responded, her home life and her teaching life. They came together when Bob knocked on the door that day.

Mrs. Spinner is gone now. The school she taught in for 20 years has been torn down and replaced by a community center. Life goes on. But you never forget a teacher like Mrs. Spinner.

Beware the perils of P.I. ~ July 11, 2002

David Heiller

“David, be careful with that poison ivy!” Mom scolded. “Use a hoe.” Mom had asked me to remove a patch of poison ivy from her backyard on July 4. So I donned a pair of rubber gloves and started pulling it up.

Fern's backyard was famously and beautifully WILD.
Poison Ivy was an issue.

“You don’t use a hoe on poison ivy,” I scoffed, ignoring her rare exclamation point.

Mom had reason to worry about P.I. She had battled a rash on her arms a couple months ago. It could have been used in a textbook on bad cases of poison ivy. She had a huge, boiling, oozing red rash.

I worked carefully, grabbing the plants by the roots, pulling them up, and piling them in the yard. Some of the branches had berries. The woody stalks were half an inch in diameter.

They reminded me of a camp-out I had made with some friends when I was a teenager. We were fishing for bullheads in the Reno Bottoms, seven miles south of Brownsville. We went out to gather wood, careful to avoid the poison ivy and its three glossy leaves. That’s hard to do at night in the Reno Bottoms, where P.I. rules.

One kid brought back a bunch of small sticks and threw them in the fire. The next day he was in the hospital with a severe case of P.I. We figured out later that the sticks he had gathered were poison ivy branches. Not only did he get a bad rash on his body, but sitting in the smoke had transferred it to his mouth and throat. He could barely breathe. It was scary.

I scooped up the pile of poison ivy in Mom’s backyard and carefully put it in a plastic bag. Then I took off my gloves and washed my hands and legs—I was wearing shorts. Mom made me throw the gloves away, and I had to put the towel and washcloth in the bath tub so that no one else would use them. I changed clothes too. I felt like I had just cleaned up a toxic spill and I teased Mom about her precautions.

Malika and Noah with Fern and her sunflower which 
resulted from a sunflower seed that the birds and 
squirrels missed in her back yard.

But she got the last laugh the next day, although she didn’t actually laugh, at least out loud. My hands and arms were fine, but my legs bubbled up with that familiar rash.

I hadn’t had a good case of P.I. since my childhood. I had forgotten the misery it brings.

It started out innocently. A few little pimples here. A cluster there. I put on some clear ointment that we had in the bathroom and thought it would be fine.

Then the main crop appeared whole fields of P.I. on my calves and thighs.

I went to the store and bought a bottle of calamine lotion. I took a small sponge paintbrush and painted the familiar pink lotion over my legs. It felt so good, because the itching disappeared. Once again I was transported back in time, when kids wore that pink lotion like war paint.

Calamine lotion stops the itching for a while. But soon it returns. There is nothing more maddening than having a poison ivy itch and not being able to scratch it. I think a very effective prisoner-of-war torture would be to rub poison ivy on a person and not let them itch it. I wouldn’t advocate using it, except for on Osama bin Laden.

I am refraining from scratching my P.I. itch, for the most part. It’s hard to totally abstain, because scratching a poison ivy itch is one of those sensations that really, really feels good. It’s a strange sensation. Scratching it feels good, then it starts to burn and hurt and itch, so you have to scratch it again to make that go away, and it feels good for about 10 glorious seconds, then it burns and starts to itch again, and so on.

And then it spreads, and the spirit of the P.I. plant is happy. It has done its duty.

So heed your mother’s advice. Use a hoe on that poison ivy patch. Or else go borrow a suit of protective clothing from your local nuclear power plant before you try to remove those rotten plants.

‘Skirls’ just want to have fun—on vacation ~ July 31, 1986

David Heiller

The cabin looked great as we moved our load of supplies in for a week’s vacation on Trout Lake two weeks ago. Carpeting on the living room floor and in the bedrooms. A clean bathroom, nice shower, no slime on the floor. Two beds and a crib in the kids’ room, and a big bed in our room.

Cindy unpacked the food, putting enough for an army encampment into the refrigerator and cupboards. I tucked the clothes into the dressers, enough duds for an army encampment too, except for mine. I brought only three shirts, two pairs of shorts, and some socks. If I had packed the food, we would have had bread and water for a week. That’s why Cindy had let me pack only for myself.

The two kids took off running the minute they hit the cabin floor. There were no bookcases to dodge, no mountains of toys or televisions or stereos. Just pure floor space, a small gym to them for running and falling.

Noah and Malika ready for canoing

Everything looked perfect. I breathed a sigh of relief, the fear of a sight unseen cabin floating out the window into the Northwood’s air. We walked down to the lake. A nice spot for the canoe nestled in the birch and white cedars. A loon called from the other shore, a quarter mile across. The water felt cool, spring fed. Only trout and a few small perch make this lake home. But the fisherman in me, even with its bullhead heritage, felt the challenge calling. Vacation had begun.

There was no time to fish the first night, but the second evening, I caught two rainbow trout, just large enough to skin up for morning breakfast. But as I pulled the canoe into place Sunday evening, Cindy came quickly out to meet me.

“David, there’s an animal living in the cabin.”

My first thought was skunk. Thoughts raced back to our basement at home three summers ago, when I cornered one there. There is still a slight odor.

“What is it?”

Daddy and Noah and a rainy night
on our vacation with the skirl.

“I don’t know. I think it’s a squirrel.” Cindy answered. “But it’s living under the sink, and it’s making a lot of noise. I want you to do something about it, now.”

It was too late to do anything at that hour, and besides, I hadn’t seen this alleged intruder. Neither had Cindy. Maybe the Northwoods had been working its wild mystery on her. Maybe nothing more than the wind in the trees.

Monday morning our three-year-old son Noah came with important news, as I lay drowsing in bed at 7 a.m. “Daddy, there’s a skirl in the kitchen.”

“A what?”

“A skirl.”

“A squirrel?” I mumbled, turning over on my side, away from him. This was the first time in recent memory that I had slept till 7, and I thought I’d try for a record 7:30. Besides, a squirrel in the house? Rampant imaginations again. Half an hour later, Noah came back in.

“Daddy, come look at the skirl.”

I stumbled out of bed, grabbed my pajamas, and walked into the living room. A pine squirrel ran under my feet and behind the couch.

“What the he-” I said, suddenly awake. Cindy stood smiling at me. I told you so, she said without speaking.

I ran to the refrigerator, grabbed the broom from off the wall, and started for the couch.

“Oh no you don’t,” Cindy said, intercepting me and the broom. “You can’t smoosh the squirrel. Noah’s been playing with it for the last half hour.”

“You can’t smoosh the skirl,” Noah repeated, a look of reproach in his eyes.

They had me. I put the broom back.

The squirrel must have been watching this important interchange from under the couch. From that point on, he became another guest in the cabin. We didn’t have to pay for him with money, only in food. He had a regular route under the table where we ate, with long stops under Mollie’s high chair. The squirrel must have had the same instincts as our dog, who spends a lot of time under the high chair at home during meals.

Noah playing Pine-Skirl hide-and-seek 

Mollie seemed to have a special rapport with the squirrel. Her 13-month vocabulary goes over our head, but the squirrel didn’t seem to mind. Mollie would walk bowlegged up to the squirrel, which would sit on its haunches and wait for her. She would stop two feet away, and call out “N-umpf? N-umpf?” The squirrel perked its ears forward. “Ah giggliea, la goolia a dda, N-umpf?”

Then Mollie would take another step, and the squirrel would dash under the couch where a hide and seek game would follow. The squirrel would pop up between the cushions, so Mollie would take the cushions off. By then the squirrel was peeking at her from under the couch. Mollie would spot it there, but while she was bent over looking, it would reappear on the back of the couch, almost quicker than the adult eye, and especially quicker than the toddler’s eye.

We found the hole where the pine squirrel entered, under the sink. That first morning I told a young man who worked at the resort. He looked at me and smiled. I told him again two days later, as the squirrel was settling in with us. He said, “I don’t know what to do about it.” I told the owner on the last night, before we left. By this time the squirrel was a part of our family, and all thoughts of smooshing it had disappeared. The owner, an elderly lady who had lost her husband only two weeks earlier, said, “We’ll have to do something about that, I guess,” in a weary voice.

It’s my bet the squirrel doesn’t have much to worry about. He made our vacation more exciting. He left a good impression on the kids, and even I learned to restrain myself when a squirrel sits under the table while we eat. I hope the next family that moves in for a week has a couple of little kids, and that the broom stays in the corner next to the refrigerator.

The mountains were our reward ~ July 16, 1998

David Heiller

“Come on, Dad, I know you can do it. I know you’re up to the challenge.”

My son, Noah, spoke those words to me. I had to smile. He sounded like a football coach. But at age 15, he has become my superior in more than a few things, one of them being mountain climbing.

That’s what we were about to do last week in Rocky Mountain National Park. All day we had talked about climbing Flattop Mountain, elevation 12,324 feet.

Most of the time it seemed like too daunting of a task. We had carried big backpacks up steep trails. The thin air had us gasping for breath. Even bending down to tie my shoes made me wheeze like I had emphysema.

Noah

We had walked over snow fields so bright that they hurt our eyes, even with sunglasses on.

Sleet and rain pelted us. We put on rain gear, then the weather warmed up and the rain suits turned into sauna suits, so we took them off again.

Flattop Mountain didn’t seem possible then.

We made camp at a site called Sourdough, elevation 10,600 feet. After drinking lots of water, I took a little cat nap. Then I let Noah talk me up the mountain.

We walked over snow at first. Then we followed a boulder field, stepping on rocks ranging from the size of a football to the size of a car. A glacier had dropped them there about 15,000 years ago.

We left the boulders and walked on tundra grass. It was speckled with bright little flowers. We stayed on this as much as possible. It was easier walking.

At Rocky Mountain National Park.

The grass amazed me. How long had it taken Mother Nature to build up this mountain lawn over the rubble and rock? A long, long time, probably since right after the last glacier retreated.

We passed some stunted trees that marked the edge of the timberline. Then it was just grass and granite and us.

We stopped a lot, every 20 or 30 feet. Partly we didn’t have any choice, because of the thin air and steep slope.

But the walk wasn’t the only thing that took our breath away. Every time we turned around the view was more spectacular. Lakes emerged like blue gem stones. The forest flowed away to the east, an ocean of green.

Mountains peered down at us, challenging us to reach their snowy heights.

We could see the green tent in our campsite. My wife, Cindy, and daughter, Mollie, were down there somewhere. Each time we stopped, the tent got smaller, the size of a dime, the size of a pea, the size of a pinhead, then gone altogether.

It was tough going. A few times, Noah wondered if we hadn’t gone far enough. Then it was my turn to offer encouraging words. We relied on each other on that hike. I wouldn’t have done it alone. Neither would Noah. We needed each other to share the sheer heights and the sheer beauty.

As we approached the top, we started seeing marmots, which are like big ground hogs, or, as Noah suggested, like small wolverines. He has always had a grim fascination with wolverines.

We passed within 10 feet of some of the marmots. They were everywhere. We must have seen 30. Why were they so tame? Maybe they had been fed by fellow hikers. Noah suggested that maybe they had fed ON fellow hikers.

“They should rename this Marmot Mountain,” I said.

Finally we reached the top. What a view!!! Yes, Peggy Jones, it was worthy of three exclamation points.

We walked to the edge of a sheer drop off. It was right on the Continental Divide. On one side of us, the snow melted and flowed into the gulf of Mexico. On the other side, it went into the Pacific Ocean. We felt on top of the world.

Balancing on the Great Divide, David and Noah.

I put my camera on a rock, set the timer, then ran to my son. We smiled for a picture, balanced on the top of a great mountain on the Great Divide.

The sun was setting. The valleys had lost their luster. The air felt colder. We hustled down the mountain. A weary feeling hit me all of a sudden. My legs felt rubbery. But that was just my body. My mind felt nothing but pride, for me and for my son.

When we reached the bottom, I shook Noah’s hand. I couldn’t believe how big it was. It was the hand of a man. I guess I hadn’t shaken it for a while.

When I was a young man, I did a fair amount of backpacking. I usually went by myself, because I didn’t like to be slowed down by other people.

I remember once in Yosemite National Park, having a day dream about owning a weekly newspaper and having a family and a house in the country.

That dream has come true. So has its reflection of returning to the mountains with my family. We did that during four days at Rocky Mountain National Park from July 3-6.

It was a joy to see our kids get along as well as they did. Teenage brothers and sisters sharing a tent could have been a disaster, but it wasn’t.

Taking the kids 
backpacking was a GOOD call.

We all carried our own heavy packs, pulled our own weight. I was as proud of Cindy and Mollie as I was of Noah and myself. Our climb up the mountain was just one example of the challenging beauty of the trip.

We struggled on some days. It was rough going. The nights were cool, the ground hard. We got wet from rain. Our camping gear was old and worn and begged and borrowed. But those things can make a camping trip all the sweeter. Things that come easy don’t mean as much.

And the mule deer and elk, the rushing streams, the millions of trees, the mountains, the snow, even the man-eating marmots, made it worthwhile, made it rewarding, made it possible.

Cindy and I would like to thank the staff of the Askov American, Hazel Serritslev, Cindy Jensen, Donna Cronin, and Tammy Olson, for putting out the paper in our absence, and allowing us to have such a fine adventure.

Everybody won on this fishing trip ~ July 20, 2000

David Heiller

“Time to get up, Collin.”

I sat next to my nephew at 6 a.m. last Friday morning, expecting a battle.

But Collin popped out of bed like a piece of toast. He was wide awake before his feet hit the floor.

Collin and his lunker

Fishing will do that to a boy age seven.

It hadn’t been quite so easy for the 46-year-old. I spent 15 minutes getting out of bed and opening my eyes (in that order), then getting dressed and climbing up to the loft to wake Collin.

“Look at the loons,” Collin said when we stepped out of the cabin. Seven loons were paddling side by side across the middle of the lake. They looked like they were practicing for the Aquatennial Parade.

We got in the boat and headed for our hot spot, which is usually luke-warm at best. Collin asked if he could steer the boat. But it was too early for that. My eyes weren’t open all the way yet. “Later,” I promised.

I eased the 14-foot boat through a narrow channel and into a smaller lake. We drifted with the current, and started casting our jigs.

Collin caught the first keeper, a crappie about a pound in size. I put it on the stringer. Collin watched in admiration. He doesn’t like to touch fish. Then he caught a small bass. I took it off the hook for him.

I didn’t have to lecture Collin about how he had to learn to take off fish if he wanted to be a real fisherman. For one thing, my son, age 17, had ridden him pretty hard about it all week. (This is the same son who wouldn’t wake up when Collin had jumped out of bed.)

Collin and David, fishing buddies, swimming buddies, just good buddies.

And Collin knew he had to learn to take fish off. But knowing and doing are two different things. That’s what learning is all about. He had made his first small step the day before, when he borrowed my handkerchief to take off a sunfish for the first time. It was a good use for a hanky.

We left the spot after an hour and headed for another place that Collin had “heard about.” Already he is spreading gossip about where the fish are biting. That’s the sign of a true fisherman! It was a half mile away, which Collin also figured into the equation, because it gave him a chance to steer the boat. He knew I would say yes this time.

I was finally awake, and the lake was glass, so I scooted over and he took the throttle of the seven horse Mercury, and we made our way, although not in a straight line, to the next little lake.

Collin had lost his red jig, which he felt bad about, because it had caught a few fish and he thought it was lucky. “Do you have a white lure with red eyes?” Collin asked. “Uncle Mike lost a big walleye with a lure like that.”

“Yeah, it’s called a Red-Eye,” I said, taking one out and showing it to him. That was the one. I hooked it onto his leader. We started casting.

“There’s no fish in this lake,” Collin said, and not more than three seconds later, he had a strike.

Collin’s rod bent over. He reeled in steadily, with only a word of age-old advice from me: Keep your rod tip up. Is there anything finer than watching a kid reel in a nice fish?

He brought it to the side of the boat, and I lifted it in. It was a largemouth bass, about 14 inches long.

That was a lunker for the lake we were on. “Can we keep it?” he asked.

“Let’s take it back and show everybody,” I stalled.

We fished a little longer. On almost every cast, Collin said, “There’s no fish in this lake.” But that trick usually only works once.

Collin steered us back to the cabin, then jumped out of the boat with the fish almost as quickly as he had jumped out of bed. He showed his mom and dad and sister and cousin and aunt. He let everyone know how he had out-fished Uncle David. That didn’t bother me. It was a win-win situation, in today’s parlance.

We took the bass back to the lake. I had broken the news that this bass wasn’t quite big enough for a respectable fisherman to keep. I pulled out the stringer, and laid the fish in the water. I held it by the tail and pulled it back and forth, until its gills were working hard. Then we watched it swim off beneath the dock. That’s a good feeling, watching a fish swim away, to be caught another day:

I cleaned the crappie. Collin watched. It’s another fishing skill he will soon master. We ate it for breakfast. It tasted great!

There’s a little Heaven at The Cabin ~ July 23, 1998

David Heiller 

Cindy and I and our kids when to a cabin last weekend to see her mother and sister and brother and his family.

We've been going to The Cabin so long that it really is a proper noun, like Heaven. A lot of good things have happened there.

Sometimes I write about them in a specific way, like taking the small-fry fishing.

But the broader picture of The Cabin can't be sketched out in a cute anecdote. It's about many things.

Noah, mid leap, at The Cabin

It's a place to relax, to take a nap without feeling guilty, to play a rigorous game of bocce ball in the morning and a tough game of cards at night.

It’s a place to eat fantastic salads made by Cindy, and fantastic shish-kabobs grilled by her brother, Randy.

It’s a neutral place where family battles and personality clashes are put aside, for the most part.

It’s a place to fish and to teach kids how to fish. That always awakens the kid inside me. I’ve taught my two kids how to fish there, and although they don’t fish much now, the seed has been planted and it probably will re-emerge and grow some day.

I’ve helped a nephew and niece learn to fish there too. No matter how hard it is to talk to kids, to “relate” to them in modern lingo, if you can take them fishing, you will connect.

You won’t get any fishing done yourself. Don’t even try. You’ll take off tiny sunfish and bait tiny hooks held by tiny hands, and you’ll hear the craziest questions, like “Why isn’t that dead fish swimming?” And it will be wonderful.

A second niece of mine, age three, had me show her how to cast her little rod on Sunday. She didn’t do well. She’s a little too young, and I didn’t push her. These things must be done delicately.

But she will learn how to fish, because there’s always next year at The Cabin.

Collin

Next to fishing is swimming. Some people are lucky and live on a lake or river. The rest of us have to be content with visiting places like The Cabin. This one sits on top of a steep hill. It takes a long walk down 46 concrete steps to get to the lake. But it’s worth the walk to go swimming.

Is there anything finer than jumping into a cool lake on a hot day? It feels especially good after a hot bike ride, or a nap that has left you groggy.

You don’t have to swim laps in the lake. You don’t have to have a purpose on the water. Remember, no guilt is allowed at The Cabin. Just sit in the water like a jellyfish. Take an occasional swim to the diving dock, to show the rest of the folks that you haven’t turned into a human jellyfish. Throw your arms over an inner tube and float around with your wife and get some serious small talk done.

And watch the kids play. That’s another joy of The Cabin. If you ever feel jaundiced about children, if you ever want to say “Kids today don’t know how to have fun anymore,” take them to The Lake at The Cabin. Yes, we really should capitalize The Lake too.

They can play all day. It always brings back a lot of good memories, watching children play in water. I think of the countless hours. I did the same on the Mississippi River when I was growing up. Literally every day in the summer. Wow, it was fun.

Grandma and the Grands at the cabin, 1996.

Now it’s almost as fun to watch them. Funny how things change. I think that is true for my mother-in-law, Lorely. She couldn’t go swimming, but she sure spent a lot of time sitting in a comfortable chair on shore and watching her grandkids play. Sometimes she pretended to be reading a book, but I know better.

Our family is lucky to spend a weekend a year at The Cabin. It belongs to my sister-in-law’s parents. They have a big family. They really get their money’s worth from it. The Cabin is booked almost every week of the year. I’m sure our family’s experiences there could be modified and repeated by many other families. I know we really appreciate it and value it.

I could go on and on about The Cabin. But you get the picture. Hopefully you have access to one of your own.

My sister-in-law’s brother, Mike, put it well on Sunday. He had been swimming on that perfect afternoon, watching the little ones, soaking up the warm sun.

He walked up the concrete steps to where I sat, playing the banjo. (Did I mention that The Cabin is the perfect place to play the banjo?)

I don’t remember his exact words. Reporters don’t take notes at The Cabin. But he said that if Satan rolls back the big iron doors and lets us out from Hell a million years from now, and gives us one day, one time, one moment, this is where we’ll come.

I couldn’t agree more.

Saying goodbye ~ July 20, 1989

David Heiller

The small black suitcase lay before me on the bed, and I hesitated before opening it. The suitcase stays in the top dresser drawer in my old bedroom, but I had never opened it before. And now, I hesitated just a second before lifting the two metal clasps, like you hesitate before lifting the phone receiver to call a friend you haven’t seen in a long, long time, not knowing who’ll answer.

Inside the black vinyl case, two bright scarves lay on top, and two hand-made pot holders, and a ceramic wall hanging, carefully painted but with colors running into each other, the yellow banana flowing onto the green foliage. Some construction paper posters were carefully folded, along with two hot pads, and a Girl Scout sash with 16 merit badges from Troop 93, Peace Pipe Council.

David and Lynette with Grandma Schnick.

I touched these things carefully, seeing for what seemed like the first time in 20 years, the smiling girl who had made them and worn them, my sister, Lynette.

Letters filled the rest of the suitcase, some still in envelopes with four cent stamps, some lying loose, scrawled in pencil. I hadn’t seen that writing for so long, the careful printing that didn’t quite stay on the line, like the ceramic colors that didn’t quite stay on their mark. I could see the toes as they gripped the stubby pencil so tightly, see the short strokes stab the paper slowly, carefully.

You know these pink slacks you made me, well their too baggy, Lynette wrote on April 29, 1968. Why can’t I get a dress for Kathy’s wedding? Everyone else is.

In a letter from Worthington Crippled Children’s School on February 20, 1966, Lynette told Mom: I will send you a copy of the paper we wrote. Boy, will you be surprised what I wrote. I miss you all, even Glenn and Sharon (the cats too).

A letter from the University’ of Minnesota Hospital on March 16, 1965, said to Mom: I hope I can go home Friday. Will you make Kathy come with you. I wanta see so bad, and she is my best sister (don’t let the girls read this or they’ll be mad at me). Glenn came Saturday night. Love to all, Lynette.

David and Lyn at Christmas

A letter from Kathy that same year lay next to this letter. I hope now that you are feeling better and can get around more, Kathy wrote. After an operation, no one feels like doing anything. Boy I bet you sure had fun when you were home, didn’t you? I suppose everyone was so glad to see you.

There was a letter from Mary Ellen to Lynette at the hospital, with a card and a kiss drawn in red taped to the page. I’ll send you a piece of gum, Mary wrote. I hope they let you chew it. I know how you love it!

There was a check-off list of things to take to Camp Courage, where Lynette loved to go every summer. Lynette had crossed “playsuits” off the list and written in “pant dresses,” more befitting to a teenager.

There were letters from Lynette when she was at Camp Courage too. Today is windy, she wrote from camp on June 23, 1964. Janet is always making me laugh. Did you get my radio fixed yet?

Two little autograph books in the suitcase had messages written to Lynette from Camp friends. One message read:

You’ve been a great camper,

Even in the heat.

But I’m still jealous

I can’t write with my feet!

Love, Margaret.

Other messages were more somber. A girl named Mary Beth wrote: You’re really the best roommate a camper could ever hope for. I’m going to miss you when you have to go on your own way and I on mine. I just hope you never forget me.

Grandma Schnick had some practical advice in the autograph book. She wrote: I just can’t think of any verse to write so will just say how very proud I am of the way you are improving and know you will keep right on. Love, Grandma

Finally there was a message from Mom: Lynette: I hope you never forget how to laugh. Love, Mother.

Laughter. Mom knew her daughter better than anyone, and in one sentence had touched Lynette’s shining star, her laughter.

Amidst all the letters was a folded piece of scratch paper. Mom’s familiar handwriting stood out on the clean side:

I knew the time had come to put away

The things you’d never use nor see again.

“Be calm, detached,” I said to me.

“These are but things.” 
But oh, they were so dear, For they had known your touch.

And in your purse I found a little mirror.

Long I gazed into its depth,

Hoping for a reflection of your smile

Captured there.

But all I saw was my own brimming eyes

And I knew the searching was in vain

And you were gone.

I closed the suitcase, just as my mother must have. Cindy lay beside me. I put my head on her chest, and cried, feeling the sheet turn wet beneath my face. I cried like never before, never since July 21, 1969, at Lynette’s funeral, three days after she had drowned at Camp Courage.

It wasn’t that long ago, 20 years, and I haven’t forgotten her, but somehow, I had never said goodbye, until now.