Minnesota Prairie Roots

Writing and photography by Audrey Kletscher Helbling

Do not bite the ears off my chocolate bunny April 14, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 7:53 AM
Tags: , ,

My foil-wrapped chocolate Easter bunny escapes to the backyard.

I WONDERED WHEN they would notice.

On Monday, more than a week after Easter, my two guys finally ask.

“When are you going to eat your chocolate bunny?” my 16-year-old son inquires as he dips into the Easter candy for an after-school snack.

“When are you going to eat your chocolate bunny?” my husband asks later, when we are dipping into the shared family candy after supper.

My answer to them is identical: “I’m strategizing,” I say. “I’m eating the other candy first because, when that’s gone, I’ll still have my chocolate bunny.” Smart, huh? Just to clarify, each member of my family gets his/her own foil-wrapped chocolate bunny treat for Easter.

“I thought you were testing your willpower,” my husband says, knowing all too well how much I love chocolate.

Even I am surprised that I haven’t at least nibbled on the rabbit’s ears.

But early on I determined that I would get more chocolate if I followed my well-thought-out plan of eating from the general family stash of candy before eating my very own chocolate.

So far, so good, I figure, unless, of course, one of the boys cannot resist temptation and bites off the bunny’s ears.

But I think they know better than to mess with a woman and her chocolate, especially this woman and her chocolate.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

The Case of the Lying Teen and the Hypocritical Mom April 13, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 8:16 AM
Tags: , , ,

AS THE HANDS on the clock nudge closer to 11 p.m. Sunday, I feel my anxiety level rise.

What has been months in the planning is about to reach a dramatic conclusion.

But I am tired, exhausted really. And for the past hour or more, I have been fighting sleep. I want this all to end so I can go to bed.

Just another 30 minutes, I tell myself, and it will be done.

In the meantime, I need my 16-year-old son to get out of here.

“Caleb, stop reading and go to bed,” I strongly, emphatically, protectively suggest. “You have school tomorrow.”

He lifts his head, turns from the pages of his book to look at me.

“You hypocrite,” he accuses.

I can’t argue with that other than to say that I’m the mom and I don’t have school tomorrow and if I want to stay up late and finish reading a thrilling mystery, I can.

Before my boy heads off to bed, he leans in to hug me. “Where’s your book?” I ask, noting that his science fiction anthology, The Starry Rift, Tales of New Tomorrows edited by Jonathan Strahan, is not on the couch or anywhere in my view.

He smiles a lying grin. “It’s in my backpack,” he says, his smile growing bigger.

I know better.

But what can I say? I am a hypocrite.

Deadly Stillwater by Roger Stelljes

As he heads upstairs, I turn back to my book, Deadly Stillwater by Twin Cities writer Roger Stelljes. The police are hot on the trail of the kidnappers.

This story line is not calming me. I am, in fact, becoming more agitated with each flip of a page.

I close the book.

I need my sleep.

The police will just have to wait until morning to solve this crime. And they do, before noon.

Now it’s Tuesday morning, and my teen is hurrying downstairs for breakfast. I spy a book tucked in the crook of his arm.

“Were you reading last night?” I ask.

“Maybe,” he answers. At least he’s not flat out lying this time.

“Do you have those tests today?” I inquire, referring to the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment tests.

“Yeah, reading,” he says.

“Then you shouldn’t have stayed up late,” I admonish.

“I was practicing,” he shoots back.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Easter egg hunt rule #1: Remember where you hid the eggs April 6, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 8:54 AM
Tags: ,

My extended family gathers for instructions before the Easter egg hunt begins.

IF YOU’RE HIDING candy-filled plastic Easter eggs, then you really ought to remember where you place them. That’s the lesson learned Sunday afternoon at the annual family Easter egg hunt.

Typically, this job is tasked to the couple hosting Easter dinner. But this year my youngest brother and his wife, who had Easter at their house in 2009, have the eggs. And they don’t arrive until mid-afternoon.

So to expedite the process after their late arrival, we adults banish the kids to the house (although no one checks to see if they might be peering out windows), each grab an egg-filled bucket and set out on our mission.

Just to explain, each kid is assigned a specific egg color and “kid” is defined as anyone up to college graduation age, although that rule has been broken occasionally.

I choose to hide 14 eggs for my 8-year-old niece, Cortney, thinking that way I don’t have to hide them so hard. Plus if I choose my 16-year-old or my 22-year-old and then make the hunt too tough, I could be the target of their frustrations.

My 16-year-old son finds an egg.

Finding good hiding spots doesn’t concern me as I begin the trek around my sister and brother-in-law’s country home. I am more worried about whether I can remember all 14 hiding spots. So I devise a system, circling the house, mentally focusing on egg placement and “marking” hiding places as best I can. For example, when I dig an egg into the grass, I “X” the location with two sticks. Another time I bury an egg under the dry grass next to a small rock.

Fortunately, my memory method works because, as I soon discover, I’ve made the egg hunt too challenging for my 8-year-old niece.

Where, oh, where can those eggs be hidden? That's my niece, Cortney, in the foreground looking for eggs.

Sensing Cortney’s frustration, I begin giving hints. “You know David and Goliath,” I say. “What did David put in his sling to shoot at Goliath?” She looks at me blankly. “You don’t know that story, do you?”

OK, then. This is going well.

So I resort to leading her into the vicinity of hidden eggs and then encouraging her. “You’re getting hot,” I prod as she zeroes in on the location. “You’re getting cold,” I warn whenever she moves further from the hiding spot.

That seems to work as eventually my now-smiling niece finds all her green eggs.

Yahoo! Cortney finds her first Easter egg, "hidden" openly in a tree.

I am relieved, not only because Cortney finds the eggs, but because I remember all 14 hiding spots.

But not my oldest brother. Long after the rest of us have settled onto the deck and the kids are emptying candy from their plastic eggs, Doug and my 13-year-old niece are still prowling the yard for two elusive eggs.

Cortney empties candy from eggs.

We are already cracking jokes about Doug’s inability to remember where he’s hidden Stephanie’s eggs. Maybe a map would help. Maybe he needs to call in sick on Monday and spend the day searching…

But deep down, each of us knows, but won’t confess, that we could be the ones out there searching for eggs in the hiding places we can’t recall.

Even Buddy the dog relaxes on the deck while my brother and niece search for the last two Easter eggs.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

An Easter egg message April 5, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 8:12 AM
Tags: , ,

THEY WERE, IT appears, trying to mess with my mind.

“They” would be two of my three kids—the two who were home to dye Easter eggs Saturday afternoon.

Dying eggs typically becomes a creative challenge in our household. Who can combine colors for the most appealing, or yucky, egg?

This year, though, the creativity was directed toward language, not visual arts.

My second daughter—the daughter who is home—is suddenly inspired. And as she writes her message with white crayon on a white egg, she is already giggling and looking directly at me.

This can’t be good.

As she dips the egg into the red-orange dye, spooning the liquid across the surface, the words begin to emerge.

She looks at her brother, encourages him to take a peek, all the while shielding her project from my peering view.

He looks and laughs a loud laugh of approval.

I am thinking hard now, wondering about this Easter egg greeting. Whatever the message, I am certain it is being written at my expense.

“Oh, I know, I know,” I suddenly exclaim. “It’s the mouse, the mouse.”

Although I do not guess her precise words, my daughter has written “Happy Easter! Guess who?”

"Happy Easter! Guess who?" my daughter wrote on an Easter egg she created especially for me.

The “Guess who?” part is all too familiar. At Christmas I received a plastic mouse from my cousin Dawn (although she doesn’t admit it) that repeated “Merry Christmouse! Guess who?” After awhile, that little phrase got pretty annoying. I suppose the mouse wouldn’t have been that annoying if my annoying kids hadn’t continued to torture me with the annoying mouse missive.

Now, I admit, they’ve gotten me again with that creative greeting on an egg.

Then, as I’m cleaning up after our egg dying session, I page through the Sunday comics laid down to protect the table. I find “Sally Forth” and a speech bubble that perfectly fits the occasion. The topic of the comic strip, surprisingly, is about Easter, albeit about eating the ears off a chocolate bunny

I lay the “Happy Easter! Guess who?” egg down atop the comic strip, next to this text:

“I’m trying to get inside my mom’s head…”

Focus on the speech bubble just to the right of the egg. It fits perfectly the motivation behind my daughter's Easter egg message, from my perspective anyway.

And they did.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Remembering my dad April 3, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 10:40 AM
Tags: ,

Elvern Kletscher, right, and a fellow solider in Korea.

I PULL OPEN the bottom file drawer and reach inside, rifling through the folders until I find it: “Elvern K. (Obits, death certif.)”

Today marks seven years since my dad, Elvern Kletscher, died at age 72 of esophageal cancer.

Every April 3, I reread my father’s obituary. I remember the man who enjoyed making tomato juice and horseradish. I remember the farmer who milked cows and worked the land. I remember my soldier-dad who struggled with the demons of war. I remember the father who loved his family and his Lord and left his children and grandchildren with a legacy of faith.

So it is while attending Good Friday services at my church that I think of my dad and his death.

I blame the pastor.

He begins his sermon by painting a picture of a loved one upon his/her death bed surrounded by family.

I am here, at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Minneapolis on a Tuesday evening with my husband and son. We are at my dad’s bedside, two days before his death, although we do not know then that he will live only two more days.

The focus, says the pastor, is on making the patient comfortable.

I seek out a nurse for a glass of ice water to quench the thirst of my dying father. I lean in close, place a straw between his parched lips, so he can drink.

The family is gathered there, continues the preacher, to hear the dying wishes of the loved one.

“Take care of Mom,” he says. I listen to my father’s wishes as tears stream down my face. I can barely endure the grief. Although I am well aware that my dad will soon be gone, “soon” has always been an undefined time that I cannot comprehend.

It is then that the pastor’s message fully makes the impact he desired. I sense the grief the disciples felt in realizing their Lord would die. Tears seep into the corners of my eyes and I wonder if I will break down and flee from the sanctuary for the pain of this moment.

I am crying now, weeping, as my dad comforts me. He tells me not to cry, that he is going to a better place. I know that he speaks the truth. Yet I cannot endure the words. So I leave his side, but for a brief time, to stand outside his hospital room, to cry my tears of sorrow.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling