By Audrey Kletscher Helbling

I admit that in the winter, I’m pretty much a couch potato once dark and cold settle upon the Minnesota landscape for the evening. I prefer to stay indoors, cozied under an afghan with my feet up, reading or watching television.

Finding something to read is never a challenge because I always have a stack of books and magazines around.

But finding an enjoyable or interesting T.V. program proves more difficult. I’m not into cop shows, sitcoms or sports, so that eliminates numerous options. I rely on a house antenna for reception, which limits channel choices considerably. So, some nights, the tube simply has nothing to offer me, which isn’t all that bad.

Lately, though, a new show has lured me in. Tuesday night I watched as John Quinones hosted the latest episode of What Would You Do? on ABC. The show films people’s reactions to staged situations dealing with blatant discrimination, stealing, wedding party crashers and other issues that play out in public. 

It’s an insightful program that leaves you feeling both disgusted and pleased with how others react. It’s the kind of show that also gets you thinking and talking about issues.

At the end of the hour, Quinones poses a question that will be answered the following week by several willing participants. This week’s question was something like: “What would you do if you went to a dinner party and they cooked something you would never eat?”

Ah. Haven’t we all had that happen? In my bank of memorable moments, that occurred some 30 years ago when I visited a college friend at her parents’ home in Minneapolis. As we sat down at the supper table, her mom carried out a platter heaped with turkey necks. She had been helping with a turkey dinner at her church. Then she brought a bowl of mashed potatoes.

I sat there quietly stunned, unsure as to how I could handle this situation graciously. There was no way on earth that I was going to pick up a turkey neck, let alone eat one. So I didn’t. I simply passed the plate.

As for the potatoes, I managed to choke down those, even though I struggled. These were not the home-grown real mashed potatoes that I was accustomed to as a farm girl. Rather, these were instant mashed potatoes. And back in those days, you could definitely tell the difference in taste and quality between real and fake. To this day, I’ve never purchased or prepared instant mashed potatoes.

What would you do? Eat the turkey necks or pass the plate?

By Audrey Kletscher Helbling

She grasped my gloved hand and held on tightly. I stooped to her level, gazing into her cloudy, unfocused eyes dwarfed by large wire-rimmed glasses. A pink kerchief, knotted under her chin, covered white curls that spilled out and gently framed her smiling face.

“Who are you?” she asked, even though I was standing mere inches away from her in the church narthex.

“Audrey Helbling,” I replied. 

I knew from the way Alice hesitated and looked up at me from her chair that she couldn’t picture my face.

But none-the-less, she embraced me with a warmth that is Alice, an elderly woman whose visual world is limited to faint outlines of shapes.

I had stopped to greet Alice while on my way out of church after Sunday worship services. Alice talked while I simply listened. She told me about her daughter, who lives in New Orleans and who is battling brain cancer. Her daughter calls every Sunday, she said. While I expected sadness to seep into Alice’s voice, there was none. But she continued to grip my gloved hand like a vise.

Then I asked how she likes her new home, an assisted living facility. Alice moved from her own house across the church parking lot awhile ago when she fell and broke a bone.

“I don’t like it so much,” she said softly, not the answer I expected from this ever-optimistic 80- or 90-something-year-old woman. “It’s not home.” I felt Alice’s fingers tighten on my gloved hand.

What could I say except, “Well, you probably couldn’t live by yourself any more.”

“I thought I could,” she said.

How do you end a conversation like that with a woman who loves her church, who almost daily shuffled blindly across the paved parking lot from her own home to the one place that centers her life, God’s house?

I regretted not that I didn’t listen or that I wasn’t caring, only that I was wearing gloves.

By Audrey Kletscher Helbling

I can’t look at an icicle without thinking, “I would like to yank that off the roof and have a sword fight.”

That’s perhaps a weird thought for most adults. But if you grew up on a northern tier farm, like me, the idea comes naturally.

My siblings and I participated in many an icicle sword fight before, during and after barn chores on our southwestern Minnesota farm during the 1960s and 1970s.

The coveted swords hung from the roofline of the low-slung milkhouse, where we dumped frothy milk, still warm from the cows, into the bulk tank; mixed lumpy milk replacer into buckets of hot water for the calves; and warmed our damp brown chore gloves atop a stove before heading outdoors into the bitter cold of a Minnesota winter.

Back then, our enthusiasm for winter ran unbridled. We delighted in snow heaped high into mountains by the loader on our Dad’s John Deere tractor, in hard-packed snowdrifts that fringed outbuildings and in the rows of sharp-pointed frozen water swords. Simply put, we loved the snow and the ice.

We tried to ignore the cold, although I remember my fingers swelling, itching and cracking until they bled from exposure to the elements. The thin cotton gloves did little to ward off the bite of subzero temperatures.

Still, that didn’t keep us from snapping long cold icicles from the milkhouse roof and engaging in sparring matches. Clank, clank, clank. We whipped our ice swords in the crisp, frigid air, banging ice against ice as we danced and maneuvered in our buckle overshoes across the snowpacked farmyard. Swords grew shorter until, finally, there was nothing left but a bit of ice in our palms. Then we raced back to the milkhouse, choosing another weapon for another round of fighting.

Those were my thoughts yesterday as I stepped outside and noticed the icicle swords hanging from the southern exposure roofline of my house. If I could have reached them without a ladder, I would have challenged my son to a sword fight.

By Audrey Kletscher Helbling

I grew up in rural southwestern Minnesota, attended school where everyone was white and the biggest differences were whether you were a town kid or a farm kid, Lutheran or Catholic. Mine was not a diverse world.

Today, like nearly all Americans, I celebrate how far we’ve come in breaking down barriers of color to become a nation that has just inaugurated its first-ever African American president.

I couldn’t help but feel emotions welling up as I watched inaugural events unfold on television this morning. No matter who received your vote during the November election, you could embrace this presidential swearing in as a defining moment in our nation’s history.

All eyes are on our country. I got a take on the world’s reaction to Barack Obama from my daughter Miranda, who returned last week from six months in Argentina. She had a November 5, 2008, copy of Argentina’s largest daily newspaper, Clarin, which dedicated nearly the entire front page to the U.S. election. The headline under a photo of the Obama family declared: Histόrico: EE.UU. votό a un presidente negro. Translation: Historical: the United States elects a black president.

Other articles in the newspaper highlighted past racial issues and Martin Luther King Junior’s dream. The headline on a story about a woman whose grandfather was a slave read: Una vuelta de página a una larga historia de odio e intolerancia racial. Translation: A turning page in the long history of hate and racial intolerance.

On the same page the headline on another article stated: Washington “tiene un sueňo” Barack Obama. Translation: Washington has a dream with Barack Obama.

Today many dreams were realized. And today we took another step toward removing racial barriers that, unfortunately, still exist in the United States of America.

In my little corner of the world, I now live in a place of diversity. Somalian women, dressed in their native garb, walk the same sidewalks as white teens clad in jeans. Ethnic restaurants sit next to eateries that serve up hamburgers and fries. A whole aisle of the grocery store is devoted to foods aimed specifically toward the Hispanic population.

On a personal level, my daughter, who is of 100 percent German heritage, is pursuing a college degree in Spanish. Thirty-five years ago, I was studying German, the only foreign language course offered in my small rural high school, where we were mostly all Germans and we were definitely all white

Q: How do you properly welcome home a Minnesotan from six months in South America?

A: With a whopping dose of subzero temperatures and double digit windchills.

Both greeted my daughter, Miranda, when she landed at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport at noon on Thursday after six months in Argentina, where daily summer-time temperatures currently hover in the 80s and 90s.

Fortunately for Miranda, her older sister, Amber, arrived at baggage claim with an armful of warm winter attire for the ride home to Faribault.

About an hour later, my daughters pulled into our driveway, passed a “WELCOME HOME MIRANDA!” banner appropriately placed in a snowbank when the temperature was minus 14.4 degrees, and drove inside our somewhat warmer garage. Although I hadn’t seen Miranda since mid-July, I didn’t step outdoors to help them unload luggage.

This reunion, I decided, was best left for the warm indoors.

You can only imagine the joy I felt embracing my 21-year-old daughter after six months. I didn’t want to let go. My 14-year-old son, Caleb, followed with his own tight bear hug.

Miranda couldn’t believe how much her little brother, who now towers above her, had grown.

So this was my Thursday, a day I have been awaiting for some time now. We celebrated last night with one of Miranda’s favorite foods — my homemade lasagna — and a bottle of wine from an Argentine vineyard she toured. We laughed. We talked. We savored the time together as a family before Amber headed back to her Minneapolis apartment.

We’ll have all of next week with Miranda before she returns to the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, for spring semester. She’s already shared a few stories about her time studying abroad in Buenos Aires, followed by mission work in the northern region of the country.

She handed out gifts — a soccer shirt for Caleb, a colorful tote and llama - embroidered cap for Amber, the wine for me and her Dad. And then she opened her backpack, stashed full of mate (MAH-tay), the Argentine version of coffee. The drink is served in special cups and is sipped through a straw that filters out the brew’s leaves. I’m anxious to taste this beverage that my daughter absolutely loves. I’ve already sampled dulce de leche, a creamy caramel spread that is served on cookies, crackers, pancakes, biscuits and such. “Divine” best describes dulce de leche, which now ranks right up there with chocolate for me.

As you can tell, I’m a happy Mom, happy to have my girl back home in Minnesota, if but only for awhile.