The first day of school ~ September 6, 1990

David Heiller

Monday night, Sept. 3, 9:15. Mollie can’t sleep. She creaks down the steps for about the fourth time tonight. That’s not unusual. She’s a great staller.

She crawls onto my lap at the kitchen table, and I hug her like a warm blanket. No yelling tonight. It’s a special night for us all.

“I still can’t sleep,” she says.

“Are you thinking about school?^” She nods, then raises her hand. “You have to raise your hand in school,” she says. “But not at nap time. You can’t raise your hand at nap time.” Noah has been teaching her the kindergarten ropes.

Up a tree, where Noah and Malika liked to be.

“I’m sad because I want to graduate,” she con­tinues, her eyes focused on a batch of fresh peanut butter cookies behind me.

“You can’t graduate until the end of the year,” I say. “First you have to go to school and learn a lot of things and be a good girl.” She nods duti­fully, still eyeing the cookies. She’s not worried about school at all, I suddenly realize. She’s worried about not getting to eat a fresh cookie.

“Would you like a cookie?” She nods again; I break one in half and send her upstairs.

 Something’s wrong. Normally Mollie would not get a hug and a cookie on Monday night at 9:15. But the first day of school does strange things to people.

Even to Mollie. Mollie the Youngest. Mollie the Staller. Mollie the Wild. Mollie the Paint-Orange-Paint-All-Over-Your-Body.

That was only three years age. I could have shipped her out to kindergarten that night, one at a boarding school very far away. There’s still orange paint on the floor by her bed.

There were other times too. All parents know what I mean. Times when you want to cut wood, or roof the shed, or bake bread or hang out clothes. Things that HAVE to get done, and a lit­tle kid keeps asking questions or wanting juice or wanting to share a favorite book or Sesame Street episode. You sigh and make time and like an idiot, you begrudge it a bit.

This all ends tomorrow, the first day of school. Mollie’s sad because she can’t graduate yet, and sadder still because she wants a cookie. She doesn’t realize the sticky mess called school—and growing up—that she is about to run into, and she’s lucky for that.

Noah is explaining the bus ride to Malika, 
meanwhile Queen Ida is nervous about them being gone.

Moms and Dads realize it, and it takes on more meaning for them. Like adults, they make a big deal about it. They’ve been bracing for it for a while, mentioning it while hanging up the clothes. “Won’t it be strange having Mollie in school?” Answering, “Yeah, wow.” but not really knowing that your gut feels like an empty house, echoing with stillness. Until now.

I’ve felt it a few times before. It comes at times of departure: a broken romance, the end of summer camp, the first day in college. I remember when I was leaving for the Peace Corps in 1977. Mom drove me to the airport in La Crosse. I felt nervous, excited, starting a great two-year adventure. I thought Mom shared those feelings, and maybe she did. But she cried as we hugged at the airport, like I hadn’t seen her cry in years.

Those tears surprised me then, but I understand them better now.

Tuesday morning, Sept. 4, 7:10: Mollie and Noah wait for Dave Nyrud’s school bus to pull into the driveway. They both wear back-packs big enough to carry a pup tent. These are children of the ‘90s.

We hear the bus down-shifting at Williams' to pick up April and Rosie. Mollie holds her arms out for me to pick her up. I hug her tight. “Why don’t you stay home?” I tell her. “We can watch The Little Mermaid all day.”

She laughs. She knows I’m joking. But she says “No” anyway, and she means it. She wouldn’t miss the first day of school for anything.

Things change when school begins ~ September 9, 1993

David Heiller

Summer came to an end on Monday of this week, Labor Day. It was the last day that the kids didn’t have school.

Time with good friends. 
It doesn't take a lot of planning in the summer.

Things change in a hurry when school starts. It’s a time of “no mores.” No more sleeping in for the kids until seven, not when the school bus arrives at 7:15. Suddenly we have to get up at 6 a.m.

No more working on the computer when I wake up, or weeding the garden for half an hour before breakfast, or sitting down with a good book and a big cup of tea while the rest of the house is asleep.

No more sleeping in the tent or the trailer for the kids. No more 10 o’clock bedtimes. No more inviting friends over for a day or night.

No more cold cereal. When school is in session, I make hot cereal every morning except Wednesday. It’s my job, and I can do it in my sleep, which is good because I’m usually asleep when I make it.

Tuesday’s oatmeal passed the taste test of my family with flying colors. (It helps to put in a lot of sugar, and a dab of butter.) Mollie even asked for a second helping, and asked if we could have mush tomorrow. I said yes both times.

This is David's Cereal Card giving water:cereal proportions which I tacked on the
inside of the cupboard door for David.
I wrangled the children and he wrangled breakfast.
What a duo!

There’s something good about starting the day with hot cereal. You sit down together as a family to eat it. You talk. You take your time, because otherwise you’ll burn your tongue. Maybe because of that, you know that things will go all right, that bullies won’t beat you up, that your best friend won’t desert you.

AND FINALLY, no more kids at home during the day. When the kids left for school on Tuesday, the house was suddenly empty and quiet. Cindy and I were talking about that last week, about how nice it is when the kids get on the bus and the house is so quiet. A little peace and quiet is OK, especially after three months of war and noise.

1993

It’s a different kind of quiet though, not like you find occasionally in the summer when everyone happens to be gone before you. That’s more of a treat. It’s a lonelier kind of quiet, and it still carries a few worries. How is their bus ride going? How are they getting along in class? Are they making new friends? Getting into fights? We’ll eagerly wait for the answers after school, when the kids get home at four.

My respect for teachers goes up at this time of year. Most teachers have families of their own, but they can’t enjoy peace and quiet the day after Labor Day, because it is their job to teach 30 or so of the ones that have just left our houses so empty and quiet. Think about it the next time you complain about how they are overpaid and get the summers off.

Both of our kids ran to the bus eagerly on Tuesday. They had new clothes and new shoes. Noah was wearing an Indian necklace made out of bones. Their backpacks were bulging with colored pencils, calculators, rulers, and notebooks without a mark in them. They are starting with a clean slate, to coin a phrase.

They like school. I feel lucky for that, lucky for a good bus driver and good teachers, good cooks and good children, and a good home.

Those are things that hopefully will never change.

Looking forward to opening day ~ September 5, 1991

David Heiller

There’s nothing quite as exciting as the first day of school what with butterflies, teddy bears, turtles, and all.

First day of first and second grade.
 Almost bravado.

First those butterflies, the kind that you feel in your mid-section when you do something new, something a little scary and a little exciting too. They swarmed inside of us two years ago, on Noah’s first day in kindergarten, and again last year when he started going full-time and Malika hit kindergarten. Now this year it’s Mollie’s turn for first grade, and we are again nervous. Every year it’s a milestone, carried by a flock of butterflies.

We parents feel the butterflies as we answer the questions of our young. “Did you ever think you would learn to write cursive, Dad?” Noah asked on Sunday night. That’s a weighty question for a second grader.

“No, I never thought I would,” I answered, quite honestly. “I remember thinking it was another language, that it wasn’t even English.” Suddenly the butterflies returned.

“But I learned, because I had a good teacher and tried hard, just like you will, because you have a good teacher and you’re smart,” I continued. Or something like that, Parent Answer Number 23 in The Handbook of Parental Responses to Questions About School, Fourth Edition.

The next day, I cornered Noah. “Why are you worried about writing cursive? That’s not until third grade.”

Malika making cookies.

“I’ll worry about school for every grade,” he answered with a sheepish grin. I suddenly realized that he wasn’t all that worried after all. He was trying his hardest to worry, but excitement was coming on too strong, shooing away the butterflies.

On Monday morning, Mollie grabbed a pen and paper. “I’m not going to be nervous,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice. “How do you write that?”

It seemed like a strange request, but I helped her with the apostrophe in I’m, then wrote out the word going. That was all the farther she got, before her butterflies left too, and she put down the pen and went to watch Sesame Street.

In fact, if you pinned Mollie down, she would admit that she’s more EXCITED about wearing her new stirrup pants, cummerbund, and floral blouse to school than she is nervous.

Her teacher, Mrs. Gentry, has helped. She sent a letter to Mollie last week, telling her to bring a teddy bear on the first day. The letter started: Welcome to first grade! My name is Mrs. Gentry and I will be your teacher. I am so glad you are in my class! That made Mollie feel good, as well as Cindy and me.

Pensive Noah.

Mollie was tickled to get a letter in the mail, especially from her teacher. Moses couldn’t have felt much prouder when he received a note from God on granite stationery, listing the 10 commandments. And Moses must have been a little nervous too.

Noah is also eager, thanks in large part to Shane, his turtle, and his teacher, Mrs. Kephart. She has told him he can bring Shane for the school year, if Noah can figure out how to keep him alive and well and living in Willow River Elementary School. Nothing would make Noah happier than to have his turtle for a classmate this year.

I guess good teachers have a way of cutting off those butterflies at the pass.

TUESDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 3: As for us adults, we’ve felt the excitement for at least one more year and one more milestone. We stood outside and felt the butterflies too, as Dave Nyrud pulled up in his bus at 7:08 and the kids disappeared down the road today. Then we walked back into the quiet, empty house a little older and a little wiser, just like the kids. The butterflies are gone until next year.

Butterflies for Mom and Dad ~ September 14, 1989

David Heiller

Monday night. Already I could feel the butterflies in my stomach, thinking about the first day of school. Not my first day. Thank goodness, those are done. No, I was worrying about my son. I was thinking about Wednesday morning at 7:20, when he would climb onto Dave Nyrud’s bus and disappear down the gravel road toward Willow River.

The very first of 13 first-day-of-school photos

Do people remember their first day at school? I remember mine. My mom took me by the hand, a block up Main Street to the red brick building. Mrs. Escar was waiting, grandmotherly smile, wearing a shiny green dress with little seahorses on it. Mom had her first competition. The next day, I stood ready for Mom to take me to school again, but she inform­ed me that I would have to walk all by myself. I wonder how she felt as I trudged off at the heels of my seven brothers and sisters. Now I know.

Noah stood in the driveway last Wednesday morning, not saying much, just waiting patiently. He wore shorts. We told him he’d probably be the only one wearing shorts, but he wanted to wear them. It wasn’t worth a fight. He carried a red pack on his back, and a cloth lunch bag with a triceratops on the side.

Cindy and I stood with him. We heard Dave’s bus come down the gravel road, stopping at Wil­liams’ house to pick up Rosie and April. Then it swung into our narrow driveway. I marched up to the door with Noah as it popped open, and Dave smiled at Noah. A country western song played on the radio. A lovely smell drifted down the bus steps, a mixture of coffee and warm bodies, the smell of a school bus on a chilly fall morning, a smell that flooded with a thousand memories like when my cousin Jeff, well, you know that story. Good memories.

I said hello to Dave. He looked at me with a knowing smile. How many parents has he seen sending their kids off to school, trying to look nonchalant, trying to hide the butterflies?

There are always times when you
just want them to stay home and play.

Noah didn’t notice any of this. He marched up the steps one at a time and headed for the back, disappearing from sight before I could say goodbye. He didn’t look back. Then the door hissed shut, and the bus chugged out of sight.

It was a happy day for Noah, a milestone, you might say, the start of the School Years and a thousand memories and even more miles than that. Dave Nyrud will soon be his hero, like Dale Besse was mine when I rode the bus. And Mrs. Nancy will soon be competition for Cindy, like my Mrs. Escar. Lots of changes, gradual ones that will add up in a hurry.

Too much of a hurry, the aging father says.

We walked toward the house, and I put my arm around Cindy. She brushes a hand across her eyes. Mollie is sitting at the kitchen table eating her usual Graham Crackers, as we go back inside. She’s only four, but she already wants to go to school.

And something is missing in the house even with Mollie there, something that we’ve grown accustomed to for the past six years. I can’t put my finger on it exactly, not without getting maudlin. All I know is that it’s disappearing down County Road 46 toward Willow River.

We’ll get used to it. Most parents do.

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.

Lots of rewards from wrestling ~ January 21, 2004

David Heiller

It was fun to write the articles in this week’s paper about the 1970 wrestling team. I think about that team and season a lot.

I was a junior that year, and wrestled quite a bit of varsity at 154. Bob Lange wrestled at 145, and Ron Meiners wrestled at 165 during much of the season. When the district tournament came, Ron cut weight to wrestle 154, and I was out of a job.

That was not a problem, because Ron was in another league, and that’s the nature of sports. You’ve got to learn to lose.

That might not sound like a good attitude, but it ultimately leads to learning how to win.

Bob Lange’s mother, Vi, reminded me of that. I found a folder full of old newspaper clippings about the 1970 team in a dresser drawer a couple weeks ago. One reporter interviewed Mrs. Lange after the state tournament, and she said, “These boys have won and lost and you must win and lose to be a winner.” I couldn’t agree more.

The Langes personified wrestling, a sport which has a strange mix of bullheaded independence and team spirit.

The independence is obvious: You get out in the middle of the mat and there is just you and him. No one to pass the ball to, no one to throw a block for you.

But those teammates are really a big part of it.

David was assistant wrestling 
coach in Stewartville in 1980. 
He loved that. (I never really 
understood the sport.)

That point was illustrated in another newspaper article from the Winona Daily News by Howard Lestrud in describing a scene from the Region One tournament in Winona. “Wrestling is oftentimes called an individual sport and not a team sport, but Lange demonstrated the opposite,” Lestrud wrote. “Teammate Ron Meiners wrestled powerful Greg Koelsch of Rochester JM in the match following Lange. During a break in the action, Lange sprinted from his seat in the bleachers. ‘I have to go talk to Ron,’ puffed Lange. He slipped by his coaches Leo Simon and Ed Ferkingstad and gave Meiners some advice. Meiners won 7-4.”

That was the thing that impressed me the most in those articles and in the present day recollections from the wrestlers. They vaguely remembered the individual matches, but they almost all recalled what a good thing they had going as a team.

And not just with their varsity teammates. They said everyone contributed, the people on JV, the guys in practice that never got the limelight—in other words, guys like me—and I could tell they meant it.

It was amazing to wrestle Mark Lange in practice, because I’ve never seen a person before or since with that kind of natural ability. He was like a cat, always perfectly balanced.

But it was more rewarding when I asked him last week what helped him get so good, and he said, “You did, Dave.”

Not just me, obviously, but me and Cary Wohlers and Mike Ellenz and Bruce Bulman and dozens of other wrestlers that slogged through the torture chamber of practice. Some of us became state champions. Others were decent, some barely so. But in the big picture, that doesn’t matter.

That’s what I like to keep in mind when I watch wrestling. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a joy to watch Collin Pitts gift wrap his opponents. But that 10-9 overtime loss by an average wrestler is just as compelling, because I know that guy has worked and tried just as hard. He’s learned how to win and lose.

And if he’s lucky, he has learned about being a part of a team, and he’ll remember that most of all.

Keep your school bus window closed ~ September 7, 1989

David Heiller

School starts this week, and along with all the advice parents will be giving their children, I’d like to add this: If you ride on a school bus, keep your windows up.

Let me repeat that in a different way so that you understand clearly.

The narrator of this cautionary tale.

Don’t open your windows on the school bus, kids, unless it’s an emergency.

I know, there’s no rule that says you shouldn’t open school bus windows. And on a nice September morning with the smell of dew and apples drifting by, you may think I’m nuts. After all, my son is going to ride on a school bus 80 minutes a day, which works out to six and a half hours each week, or 10 days out of the year keeping Dave Nyrud company. Shouldn’t he be able to smell the burning leaves along the way?

Keep your window closed, Noah.

Take it from someone who rode a bus to high school for five years, and who has never forgotten that one morning, lo these 20 years ago...

My cousin, Jeff, was sitting in the fourth seat back, on the left side, like he always did. But I noticed how pale he looked the minute I swung past him and sat down next to the window that fine fall morning.

(I kept the window closed, although the Cool Kids at the back of the bus had theirs open. They had their windows open almost every day of the year, even in the dark of winter. I think it had something to do with the cigarettes they smoked.)

“I don’t feel so good,” Jeff admitted right away. “I threw up twice before getting on the bus this morning.”

“Why the heck are you going to school?” I asked.

“I feel pretty good now,” he swallowed. Jeff liked school, you might say.

But as the bus started up the hill toward Caledonia, Jeff seemed to grow even paler. His white face changed to an off-green with each pot hole we hit. He wasn’t talking either, which was unusual for Jeff, who usually boasted about his muskrat line or fishing or, lately, his girlfriends. His eyes fixed on the back of the head in front of us, but they didn’t see it, seeing instead something inside himself, something awful and lurking.

Even Dale, our bus driver, noticed it. He scanned us through the mirror on his windshield visor as we neared the top of the hill. “You okay?” he called back to us. Jeff had told him earlier, somewhat proudly, about his upset stomach. Dale was concerned for his passengers, but he was concerned about his bus too. He had to clean it.

Jeff swallowed again, twice in rapid succession. A weak “Yeah” was all we heard, as he nodded at Dale.

Everything was fine for the next minute. Then suddenly I felt a furious tapping on my left shoulder, as Jeff scrambled to his feet. I looked up at him; his cheeks were bulging, his face puffed out like a bull frog. He was gesturing frantically at the window.

Remember, it was closed. But not for long. I sprang up and pulled out the two side locks and slid the window down in an unofficial Guiness Book of World Record time of opening a school bus window, .079 seconds.

Cousins, a number of years 
and a number of tales later.

Jeff jammed his head out the narrow window, and his stomach contents came flying forth in a grand finale of what was once oatmeal and corn flakes.

If you’ve ever tried to spit out an open car window going 50 miles an hour, you know what happened next. The windows behind us were instantly coated, all the way back to where the Cool Kids sat, by their open windows. A fireman with a hose couldn’t have done a better job.

I won’t describe what was said next from the back of the bus. (I’ve already crossed the fine line between humor and good taste in this column.) But I’ll never forget Bobby Blair standing up in his seat back there, and taking off his glasses and cleaning off the oatmeal on his shirt tail.

So take it from Jeff, and me, and the Cool Kids: Don’t open your bus window, unless you have no other choice.

Some difficult childhood lessons ~ September 22, 2006

David Heiller

I read an interesting book recently called They Called Me Teacher, by Tom Melchior.

It contains stories of Minnesota country school teachers and students from 1913 to 1960. Those stories run the gamut of human interaction, but one that has to do with bad teaching sticks in my mind.

Corrine Lesteberg Johnson, who attended District 40 East near Murdock in Swift County, from 1931-1938, wrote it.

“We all knew that our second-grade teacher had never lived in the country. So we had a feeling that she thought she was better than the rest of us. I started at Christmas time making valentines. We had a long Christmas vacation, six weeks off, so what was there to do during that time but make valentines. I loved that kind of creative stuff.

“I used foil from the Christmas cards and the laced doilies that my mother had bought. I made the cards so they were three-dimensional, you could open them up. Oh, I really worked on those cards. On Valentine’s Day I passed out all my beautiful cards. I made a special one for my teacher.

“At the end of the school day after everybody had looked at their valentines but before school was even out, my teacher opened the door to the furnace and threw all the valentines into the fire, including my beautiful card. That really hurt me. I had worked so hard on that valentine. If she didn’t want to keep them, why didn’t she wait until we had all gone home? Then I never would have known. I never really had a lot of respect for that teacher after that. It broke my heart. I cried all the way home.”

Noah and Malika with their
cousin, Brooke, playing school
in the old Brownsville School House.

We probably all have had experiences with bad teachers, but that lady would have to top the list.

It got me to thinking about other bad teaching experiences. I still remember one when I was in second grade. I was playing with scissors, pretending to cut my nose. The scissors could barely cut paper; let alone something as tough as my nose. The teacher wasn’t in the room, but she found out (thanks to a student who shall remain anonymous), strode over to me, and slapped me across the face.

I was shocked and embarrassed, as was the whole class. It was just plain wrong, totally unnecessary. Bad teaching.

My brother had a bad teacher one year. He recounted a couple experiences. “We were taking turns reading from some book and I was nervous about my turn coming up. When it came to be my turn I stood up and I stuttered the first word, something like p-p-p-p- and the teacher sat at her desk and did the same thing, p-p-p-p-p. Can you believe it? She really embarrassed me and all the kids had a good laugh. Another time, I had to give a report of some kind and the cap on my front chipped tooth had come off. I walked up to her desk and asked her I could do the report another day. She refused my request and made me stand in front of the class with my missing tooth and give the report. Mark it down as another humiliating day for me.”

A teacher friend of mine had this tale: “We were seated based on latest test score with the best in the front right, weaving to the worst in the back left. Can you imagine how that affected a child’s willingness to learn? Wow!”

Public humiliation is never a good thing.

Malika and some classmates in an all school production. 

It’s funny though, I can’t recall many truly bad teachers or things like this. That’s a testament to the fact that most of my teachers did a good job, something I still believe is the case.

Still looking for the answers ~ August 29, 2002

David Heiller

That weekend, I am sure Noah 
would have rather been fishing.

Are you all packed up?” I asked my son on Sunday morning. “Yeah, I guess,” he said with his customary enthusiasm.

“Did you make a list?”

“No, I don’t need a list,” he said with disdain. I’m a list person when it comes to packing for a big outing like a canoe trip. And this was a big outing, even bigger than that. He was moving to a dormitory and going away to college.

I could tell he was nervous about it, the way he snapped at me, so I let it go, and a few others like it. Pick your battles, I say.

I probably did the same thing to Mom and my sister when I went off to college in 1971. I can still remember that car ride to the University of Minnesota, my sister chattering to keep me from getting too scared. Like I was chattering with my son on Sunday.

It didn’t help much. I still had to go into the dorm, sign at the desk, get a key, go up to the seventh floor, and meet two strangers, my roommates. It wasn’t easy, but I knew I had to do it. Like taking a slug of awful-tasting medicine.

Noah and his easy smile.

We found the dorm on Sunday, after a few detours and dead-ends. The key into the room didn’t work, so a girl had to come down from another dorm and give us a new one.

“This is a really nice room,” Cindy said as she bustled around. I was about to say that it felt like a prison cell, but she was quick to add, “Isn’t it, David?” and I had to agree. Yes, it is a great room.

My son and I made the top bunk, where he would sleep. Cindy and I helped him put a few things away. “I can do that,” he kept saying. So most of his belongings stayed in their crates and boxes. His sense of order is different than ours, to put it politely. It was stupid to think that this would suddenly change because he was in a dormitory. Sudden changes aren’t part of the natural order.

So we said our good-byes, me with a hand-shake, Cindy with a hug. Then it was down to the car, just the two of us. The car was empty, and so were we. That’s something we’ll have to get used to.

First day  of kindergarten.

Mom must have felt the same way those three decades ago. Something had come to an end. I was scared for my son. Worried about how he would do, if he would make it. But sure that he had to try it, had to get away from home.

We leave home in many different fits and starts. Some people seem to be able to do it with barely a glance back. Some barely leave at all. Some people are just plain independent. Others are just the opposite.

Leaving home is a big part of the journey in finding out who you are. It can lead to all kinds of adventures, from foreign countries to a home in rural Minnesota. From a scared college kid, to a worried parent. All these things keep changing.

I’d like to say that it is easy, that you can do it without butterflies in your stomach and clashes with your roommates. But it doesn’t work that way for too many people.

I put some of this into words to my son, but it came off as mostly boring advice from the land of bland. Like most of life, he’ll have to figure it out for himself. If we have done our job, he probably will, although it may take a while. I’m still working on it after 31 years.

The first day of school has changed ~ September 4, 1997

David Heiller

The first day of school has changed around our house. Not too many years ago, the kids looked forward to returning to school. It was an exciting, nervous time. They wanted to see their old friends. They knew they would meet a few new ones. They were curious about their teachers.

Those early years of the
first-day-of-school photos were really fun.
(Noah is in first grade, Malika in kindergarten.)

When Dave Nyrud would pull up into the driveway with his school bus at 7:10 or so, they would jostle each other in an attempt to get on first.

I couldn’t talk the kids out of getting on the school bus on the first day of school, but it wouldn’t take much talking now.

For about the past three weeks, they have been lamenting the end of summer and the start of school.

I wouldn’t say the kids hate school. That’s too strong a word. But somewhere along the line, they have grown to not like it very much.

School used to be mostly fun. Now it’s mostly work.

That’s not surprising. A teacher’s job is to make the students work, and hopefully learn. A good teacher is someone who can make learning fun too. I tip my hat to them. It’s not an easy job. Too much fun and some stuffed shirt will complain, “You have to take education seriously.”

Yeah, but if you don’t enjoy what you are doing, you’ll never be very good at it, or you’ll be miserable, or both.

Most teachers have my respect. Cindy and I try to pass that attitude on to our kids. It’s important.

Some people bash teachers, and complain about their unions and their wages and their summers off. To them I say, “Go get your teaching license and give it a try.” Most people couldn’t cut it.

1997, the first-day-of-school
photos were not as much fun
 in 1997. But they were good
 sports, mostly.

Noah, who is in eighth grade, is quite articulate on the matter of returning to school. On Monday he called it a “travesty.” He has never used that word in a sentence before, to my knowledge. So school is teaching him something!

Mollie, now a seventh grader, isn’t as outspoken. But she has told me that she isn’t looking forward to school. She is afraid her classmates won’t like her new dress or new shoes. Peer pressure is a big part of her life. Some things never change.

Tuesday morning was chilly. Fall was in the air. So Mollie walked out the door wearing a jacket. Noah told her not to wear it, that she wouldn’t need it and that kids might tease her about it. So she took it off. It was a rare instance of her listening to her older brother.

I can’t say as I blame the kids for not being excited about school. Put yourself in their shoes. They’ve just had three months off. When was the last time you had three months off? Would you want to be going back to work after that? That’s what the kids are feeling.

So are teachers. But they are professionals and adults. They are making a good living. They can buck up and do their jobs.

The kids are still learning how to do that. Handling the emotions of returning to school is a big step in that direction.,

On the way to church on Sunday, Noah said for the umpteenth time that he was “bummed” that school was starting. Then he allowed that we must be sad too.

I hated to tell him that that was not quite accurate. But being an honest and sensitive dad, I pumped my fist in the air and said, “All right!”

Hey, a little gloating never hurt anyone. It gives the kids something to look forward to.

Yes, there are a few people who are happy about the return of the school year.