Quarter of a Cent-Cherry

Posted on April 19, 2014 by Nicki

Great conversation, loud laughter, fun stories. Inside jokes and quick-witted comments and the type of easy, comfortable banter that comes from many years together, from shared experiences and milestones, difficult times, tears, proud moments, pure elation and happiness. From close friendship.

The air is dry, and the trees are tall, and it’s rustic and gorgeous.

Tahoe, California. Spring. 2014.

South Lake Tahoe

Was it really twenty five years ago that I was half a world away, breathing air as dry, amongst trees as tall, hanging out in somebody’s rustic bunk, cocooned by esoteric jokes and hysterical laughter and the closest of friends?

Lapalala Wilderness, South Africa. Fall. 1989.

Fifteen years old, on a week-long wilderness program in the Limpopo Province with my tenth grade class, it was the very best of times. I loved all those school retreats to simple, woodsy places in the Highveld, where it was very, very cold in the early morning and at night, sweltering hot in between. When we were woken at the crack of dawn, and saw the mist rising with the African sun. Ate cornflakes and toast with thick peanut butter and bananas for breakfast, and then packed it all up for a long hike to learn about the Toothbrush Plant, and how to belay down a mountainside. Walking in smaller groups of twos and threes, paired off with my crush of the moment, or sharing wild hopes and dreams with my BFF while the hadedas called to each other in the broiling heat.

Lapalala Wilderness

Mixed tapes played Men at Work and Phil Collins, Roxette and Milli Vanilli on portable boom boxes. We dismissed every rule late into the night, breaking curfew the very least of it. The girls snuck into the boys’ bunks (never the other way around), and we told secrets and broke promises and huddled together to keep warm.

My 25-year-old memories haunt me lately. I keep coming back to that year, 1989, when life just worked. For me. It wasn’t always like that before, and almost never again, but that year the music was right, and school was okay, and my siblings were fun and my parents understood (or they pretended to) and, most important of all at 15, my friends were perfect in every way.

Twenty five years later many of those friends are still perfect to me in every way. As I gaze out at the impossibly tall Tahoe pine trees, I ache to have them closer to me – we are scattered all over the Earth – to share inside jokes, and laugh at nothing, and sing Land Down Under out of tune at the top of our lungs.

A burst of laughter pulls me away from 1989 – I focus on the faces around me. They are warm and happy, smiling and talking. Faces I know and love. Here I am, twenty five years later, half a world up and away, with friends that are perfect to me… in every way.

Quarter of a Cent-Cherry by OPI

This post was written as part of the April A to Z Challenge. To read more of my A to Z posts click here.

Push and Shove

Posted on April 18, 2014 by Nicki

They spent the afternoon in the snow. Tumbling over each other like overgrown puppies. Laughing. Playing. Together. It was almost 70 degrees, bright blue skies, and most of the snow is already melted.

But they were determined to play in the snow, whatever was left. They left me reading at the pool, got their snow pants and jackets and gloves, grabbed the red and green snowball makers and trekked up the ski hill past the sign that loudly proclaims: No sledding on the ski hill.

So they butt-sledded.

I squinted up the blinding white hill and saw four figures – medium, small, smaller and extra-small, tumbling down the snowy white slope. Over and over again. And over each other. Soaking wet gloves, trashed sneakers, sore butts.

Most often their play ends in anything but. It ends in tears. And raised voices. Shut up. You’re an idiot. Or even an accidental shove that nobody believes was an accident. There are slaps instead of words, and loud wails, and always my disappointment that my very parental and annoying warning “someone is going to get hurt” was unfortunately realized.

There was no pushing and shoving yesterday afternoon. They delighted in each other. So happy to be together. Maybe it was the magical snow. Or the thrill of tumbling down a steep hill on their butts. Or maybe it was because it was just the four of them, up there on the mountain, taking care of each other. And they didn’t know I was watching.

Push and Shove by OPI

This post was written as part of the April A to Z Challenge. To read more of my A to Z posts click here.

Our Song

Posted on April 17, 2014 by Nicki

We don’t have a song. When it came to choosing one for our first wedding dance, he didn’t really care, and I did but I changed it three times. We ended up with Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” (Titanic was released a few months before we got married). Cringe, I know.

It’s a beautiful sentiment, haunting melody, Celine’s voice is magnificent… but so what? There’s nothing especially meaningful in that song for either of us – we didn’t hear it at a special time in our relationship, it wasn’t playing the first time we kissed or the second or indeed ever when we were together except when we saw the movie. It was just a cliché love song playing on every radio station in 1998.

I’m kinda surprised at myself. At us. That we don’t really have a song. And that I didn’t pay more attention in choosing the Just Right Song for our wedding. Music lives large in my life. There’s always something playing – in the car, in the kitchen, while I’m writing. New alt rock, latest hits, classic rock, sixties and disco and country, country, country. My greatest discovery last week was the Billy Joel channel on satellite radio – #knoweverysong!

I “have” songs with other people – “Come On Eileen” and “Just Can’t Get Enough” are always high school BFFs, “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel is Israel 1987, “Eternal Flame” and Richard Marx are first boyfriend. Macklemore’s “Can’t Hold Us” is my son and so is Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler”. Even my little guy and I sing The Wanted’s “Glad You Came” together.

The family movie last Friday was Three Men and a Baby (that’s a fun trip down bad 1980s hair and fashion!) – once the chaotic, slapstick hilarity of three goofy guys taking care of a crying, pooping, giggling, hungry baby girl simmers down, they sing Sha Na Na’s version of “Goodnight Sweetheart” as a bedtime lullaby. Ryan and I looked at each other.

And somehow my brain skipped from Sha Na Na to Grease to Buddy Holly, to the Garth Brooks concert he took me to in Vegas two years ago, to every Les Mis song we know by heart because we’ve seen it six times, to the first Elton John concert we went to at Sun City and the next time we saw him with Billy Joel in Oakland…

We don’t have one song, it’s true. We have hundreds. And now that I think about, we should’ve gone with Elton John’s “Crocodile Rock” at our wedding!

Our Song by OPI

This post was written as part of the April A to Z Challenge. To read more of my A to Z posts click here.

Not Like the Movies

Posted on April 16, 2014 by Nicki

The carwash brushes swirl the soap back and forth, back and forth across the windshield. The light reflects off the thick bubbles. There’s a faint slap-slap every time the rubber part hits the glass. Hypnotic. Peaceful.

Cut to the Jewish Community Center. Boxes of something are being packed and organized for a food drive, or a fundraiser or a holiday carnival. “Smile, Girls, I’m going to put this on Facebook and tag you all,” the volunteer in charge says.

She’s a writer. She studied Journalism at college and now she’s a stay-at-home-mom with a blog. Most days she’s still in her sweats when her husband comes home at 6pm, because if she stops to actually get dressed it’s all over.

Ever seen the movie Afternoon Delight? It stars Kathryn Hahn as Rachel – the confused, trying-to-figure-it-out, Jewish, writer-mom-volunteer who finds tremendous solace and inner peace at the carwash. Fifteen minutes into the movie I wonder if writer/director Jill Soloway had been spying on me for several months.

That’s what makes great art great – movies, books, songs that imitate life. That viewers, readers and listeners can relate to: Hey, that kinda happened to me! Wow, I felt that way too. I remember a break-up like that. A family Christmas when that exact thing happened. Sneaking out with my best friend… We love those movies. We love feeling that our experiences and feelings are shared by others. It gives us a sense of belonging, of normalcy even, at a time when we felt left out and different.

But there’s something disconcerting about watching my life play out with uncanny accuracy in a movie, Hollywood or otherwise. While it’s comforting to know that others have similar experiences, that I’m (obviously) not the only Journalism grad who didn’t make a real career out of it, it’s unsettling, uncomfortable and really difficult to watch. On a big screen. From the outside looking in, but also from the inside feeling out.

In Afternoon Delight Rachel is trying so hard to figure it out, she invites a down-and-out young stripper to come live with her and her family. Rachel wants to save her. And of course, we can see, this has trouble written all over it. Rachel really has the best intentions, she loves this woman, wants to help her – but her mom-friends don’t like it so much, her husband doesn’t want to like it, her friends’ husbands love it.

Complicated situations, tested relationships, and at the end of this Hollywood movie, Rachel realizes much about herself and her marriage, and she and her husband indeed figure it all out. The End.

book

There are times I wish I could yell “That’s a wrap!” and high-five myself and everyone around me that yeah it’s all perfect, and worked out for the best, and everything’s good, no great! But life is not like the movies. Thank G-d. I may be a frustrated Journalism graduate, who volunteers at the JCC and drives a minivan. But I haven’t brought an exotic dancer home (yet!) and my afternoon delight is usually a cup of tea and 20 minutes with a good book.

Nope – not like the movies. And that’s a good thing.

Not Like the Movies by OPI

This post was written as part of the April A to Z Challenge. To read more of my A to Z posts click here.

Miss Piggy’s Big Number

Posted on April 15, 2014 by Nicki

My knees bear testament to my clumsiness. They both carry faded yet visible remnants of an epic netball game played in Johannesburg in 1991. We lost. Fifty-zero. I don’t think I was the worst player on the team. Just the clumsiest.

Miss Piggy is not clumsy. She is gorgeous and graceful in all her Miss Piggy-ness. And everything she does – from blowing Kermy a kiss to performing on stage – is a Big Number.

woolymammothblog.com

But me… twisted ankles always. Graceless runner. Bumped elbows and bruised hips still, as I move too quickly, thoughtlessly. I went flying on that tarmac-covered netball court decades ago, bruised and scraped my knees so badly my husband will tell you it’s the first thing he noticed about me when he met me a year later. No athletic ability at all. Just clumsy.

A few summers ago, my family discovered the magic of Lake Berryessa in Napa County, California. The most incredible lake I’ve ever seen. Enormous and blue with high ochre-colored banks and tall trees. Mirror-smooth water. The air is hot and dry, the water refreshingly perfect when you first dive in, just enough chill to keep you giggling and happy.

We rented a speedboat, skis, and an inner tube. The kids tubed for hours, faster and slower, we tried to get them to fall off. The laughter bubbled out of their bodies.

And then I decided it was time for my Big Number.

No athletic ability. As clumsy as anything. But I can waterski. I can engage my arms, and weight my thighs, somehow balance on my wobbly angles and actually stay upright for as long as I want. I can glide over that water, cross the wake, and feel faint whispers of (dare I say it) graceful ability.

My uncle taught me how to waterski. At the Vaal River in South Africa – a long, wide, gently flowing river that separates Gauteng province from the Free State. Beautiful weeping willow trees drape the riverbanks and lazy leguaans (a type of lizard) float in the water. It’s one of the most serene, tranquil places I know. And where some of my most favorite childhood memories live: swimming, barbecues, swinging from a rope off the jetty. Long lazy Sundays of laughter and togetherness.

The last time I skied at the Vaal must have been around the time I scarred my knees. It was 20 years before I skied again. Before my Big Number.

Shivering with anticipation and nervousness, I held the rope tight. The boat moved, I lurched and for a second I envisioned a belly-flop. But I tightened my arms, leaned back… and I was skiing! Whispers of graceful ability.

I breathed in the dry California air, crossed the wake, felt the chill spray in my face, and heard my kids’ happy, whooping disbelief that their mom knows how to waterski.

My childhood memories of fun and happiness, of a gentle, patient teacher with the biggest laugh in the world, propel me up and forward on that water. My Big Number.