Getting Acquainted

Posted on April 8, 2014 by Nicki

Given that I only have one daughter, I like to think that I know her pretty well. One daughter, three sons. I like to think that I know them all pretty well, but her especially. Because the two of us are the Girl Power in our testoterone-heavy family. We are a natural duo a lot of the time: she runs errands with me, we get our nails done, go shopping on rare occasions.

She is as boisterous as her brothers, has water balloon fights and nerfgun wars with them, eats as much as they do, and watches whatever they’re watching at full volume (I’m pretty sure they’ve all blown their hearing by now) but every few days their loud, intensely wolfpack boy-energy overwhelms her as much as it does me, and the two of us retreat. Either alone, or together.

She keeps the door of her bedroom closed. Whether she’s in it or not. She says it’s because she doesn’t want Pretzel the dachshund to shuffle in and pee on the fluffy cream rug, but I rather think it’s to keep her she-domain to herself. When she’s nowhere to be found, I quietly push open that bedroom door, and see her dark head bent over her desk, where she’s drawing or making a card for someone or writing a story.

During her seven years with me, I’ve come to know that the only fruit she really likes is pears, and that she loves art and writing. That she wants to be an actress and go to college in New York City. She is shy but social. Good at karate and mediocre at ballet. I know she loves clothes that feel soft. She cuts out the tags because they itch her neck. When she reads to herself she actually says each word out loud in a soft, barely audible undertone that is not a whisper. I know that she loves to take care of her little brother, but is almost always irate and exasperated with the one just above her and a little in awe of the one above him.

But sometimes she reveals herself to me in ways so full of unexpected wonder I feel like I’m meeting her for the first time.

Like when she told me during my library shift at school today that she’s checking out a picture book because she is reading two chapter books at home – I had no idea. Or when she exploded into uncontrollable laughter watching the little guy inhale my skin (he has some kind of olfactory connection with me) – it surprised me that she found it so funny, and her laughter was so completely uninhibited that soon all three of us were hysterical. She makes witty comments now and again, in a voice so dry and deadpan if I’m not watching her face and her lips move, I would miss them. She is not a jokester like her brothers, and it seems out of character yet so perfect when she delivers these one-liners.

The other day she read my post about Dutch Tulips. And she said, “Mom, I like how you have the word ‘tulips’ at the end of the first paragraph, and then you end the whole thing with the word ‘tulips’.”

I stared at her in wonder while my heart skipped many beats and my brain tried to figure out who this girl, with the green-gray eyes and smattering of freckles across her nose, was exactly. Her intuitive insight into an apparently insignificant detail seemed far beyond her seven short years of life. Because of course it’s not an insignificant detail. It’s so significant. And deliberate. It’s how I tied the piece together, and I made a conscious choice to use the word there. And again there.

My little girl has a killer sense of humor. Can read two books at once, and knows her limits. And is developing an intuition for the written word that she is just discovering. And so am I.

My girl and I – we’re still getting acquainted. I hope the “getting” part lasts forever.

Getting Acquainted by OPI

Fly

Posted on April 7, 2014 by Nicki

photo by Jenn Fox

Fantastic, I thought, as I watched them performing. These kids are fantastic!

It wasn’t just their performances – some of those were definitely less than fantastic. It was their creativity, their confidence, their palpable joy at being on the stage.

I remember feeling that way.

Piedmont High School’s Bird Calling Contest is exactly that: high school students behaving like birds, flapping and chirping and squawking and doing weird things with their throats and their eyes and their hands, on stage, in front of hundreds of people – competing for the prize of best bird call.

The contest has been around for 49 years – it’s received national acclaim as the top three flocks fly to New York City and appear on The Late Show with David Letterman, where they do it all again. This time in front of millions on national TV! It’s pretty fabulous to sit at home in Piedmont and watch kids you know or have seen around town strut their stuff with David Letterman.

But before their west-east migration to NYC and Letterman fame, the wannabe-birds have to prove themselves on stage in the wilds of Piedmont. And they are great. Every last one. They are funny, and talented, and determined. They perform in flights of two or three, and part of their challenge is to present facts about their birds creatively and dramatically. Some are, of course, better than others. Some skits are more artistic, some birds have killer comic timing, others are more imaginative or have feathers to die for. But every single one of them loves being on that stage. I can tell.

photo by Jenn Fox

And I remember that feeling.

I haven’t been on a stage, in a performance, for over 20 years. Probably since I played a hippo(potamus) in Rhodes University’s production of Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories: How the Elephant Got its Trunk. Definitely not a role that stretched my acting abilities any which way, but still. It was a play, on a stage, in a theater (a few theaters – we toured it to a bunch of schools in the Eastern Cape), in front of an audience, with costumes and set and crew and cast parties and all the elements that I love about a theater.

At the impressionable age of six, my very first drama teacher ignited in me a passion for the dramatic that burned way beyond the stage of the Piet van der Walt Theater in Pretoria West. I was headed for Broadway. Or Hollywood. Or Rhodes University, Grahamstown. Or sitting in the audience at the Alan Harvey Theater in Piedmont.

The first real play I was in was Carmel Primary’s all-school production of Bible Bonanza – each grade performed a biblical tale from the first grade suns and moons until Moses told Pharaoh “Let my people go” and the Red Sea majestically parted. My third grade class honored heroic Samson – and I played his mother: “No razor shall touch my baby’s head,” my little eight-year-old voice rang out clearly, as I stared into those spotlights, unable to see a single human form but knowing the hall was packed with proud parents and they were all watching me. It was fantastic.

It’s a rush, being on stage. Thrilling and terrifying and awfully amazing. My brain always, always goes blank right before I start speaking – but somehow the words find their way back. And then… lost in the magic. Until it’s over. And there’s applause. And the blood rushes in my ears, and I know I’m smiling the biggest smile ever because even my heart is smiling. Smiling and soaring.

I remember that feeling.

I felt it again while I watched those fabulously feathered friends on the stage at Piedmont High School’s 49^th Annual Bird Calling Contest. The young man who played his guitar and sang like he was at the Bluebird Café, all kinds of charm and charisma at the age of 16. The girls who were a little off-key but so brave, so confident, so happy. The hosts who could give Ryan Seacrest a run for his money, with their impromptu one-liners and perfect timing every time. And the Snowy Egrets and Owls, Goldfinches and Cockatiels who took flight in that theater. I soared with them.

photo by Jenn Fox

Hippo or Athol Fugard or The Crucible or Puck or some crazy sex-crazed character in a play called The Well of Horniness… (stay tuned for W).

Fly.

Fly by OPI
mischsbeautyblog

Fly is my favorite OPI color and is on my toes right now. It is fun and fabulous and lifts me up when I’m looking down.

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

Eiffel For This Color

Posted on April 5, 2014 by Nicki

Me & the Eiffel Tower – Feb 2012

Expectation. Tricky… I think I confuse it with Hope. And they’re not the same at all. One is a strong belief that something is most likely to happen in the future. The other is the desire for something to happen or to be true. The difference is subtle… but definitely present. To think something is going to happen or happen in a certain way means I probably have sound reason to think it will. Expectation is generated in my brain. To want it to happen is a feeling, often lacking circumstance or reason. Hope comes from my heart.

When I was 22 years old, my boyfriend (now my husband) and I backpacked around Europe. I had graduated college the year before, he was still in Law School, and we’d never done anything quite like that together before. Our student days were spent apart – my campus was a 2-hour flight or 12-hour drive away from his – and the longest time we’d ever consecutively spent together was a week. Clearly this story does not end with broken hearts – we’ve been married 16 years this month, and it took us five years to do that. But while we saw snow together for the first time in Switzerland, walked the canaled streets of Venice bent over double from the weight of our backpacks and delighted in Paris, we did have to manage expectations – of ourselves, of each other, of being together – no matter what hope we held in our hearts. Like in any relationship.

In a town in Italy – my almost-40-year-old brain has difficultly remembering which – I was tired of walking, and cold. I needed a hot drink. And a chair. Both of which I reasonably expected to find in any of the dozens of Italian cafés lining the streets. Hopefully I would be re-energized after just such a break.

The price of a hot tea increases some if you drink it while sitting in the cozy café – it is cheaper to take it to go, or to drink it standing at the counter. Neither of which were appealing to me right then. I just wanted to sit down.

But the rand-lira exchange was not favorable in 1995, and Boyfriend had planned it all out so carefully, and this detour and drink were already unexpected so there would definitely be no slow sipping of tea while seated.

I was disappointed. He was right. (Of course, at the time I did not tell him he was right – I told him how insensitive and idiotic he was, and I may have shed a few tired and frustrated tears). My expectations of tea and rest were not completely realized, and so I was disappointed. But I got the te caldo to go and I’m sure we found a lovely bench somewhere on the street, and the rest of the day went on as wonderfully as all the days before and after – which was what I had hoped for that trip: days of wonder discovering Florence and Zurich, the Spanish Steps, Avignon and the Eiffel Tower.

Eiffel For This Color
oflifeandlacquer.com

Dutch Tulips

Posted on April 4, 2014 by Nicki

Daffodils and paperwhites. Freesia and wisteria. Purple, white and blue hygrangeas bursting on bushes. Jasmine – my favorite, sweetly scenting the breezes. And tulips.

tulips_white Hundreds of them, all over town. A floral sunrise of yellow, orange and pinky-red. Deep inky purple and purest white, tall and properly proud – they’re always the most elegant, those two, especially when standing together.

I’m a Spring Soul. I think it’s serendipity that I moved to the northern hemisphere where the season I was born into is now Spring. It heralds new beginnings, promises light and sunshine, colors are shyly showing themselves and the soft air seeps into my skin and swirls around my bones, gently warming me up from the inside out.

But it’s those springful smells that soothe my soul. Heady jasmine that always makes me smile and tear, tugging the nostalgic strings of my heart where my favorite South African memories live. Wisteria that wafts over me in a cloud of purple when I walk by the Rockridge library, and bunches of fragrant freesia I buy at Trader Joe’s – both take me back to long walks on campus with my best friend, another Spring Soul. She taught me that wisteria is called wisteria, and we would give each other freesia bouquets of yellow and white to fill the jars in our dorm rooms. Her birthday is in the southern hemisphere Spring – where she lives.

We barely had a winter here in California – the sun shone all through December and January, there was no rain, and despite a deluge of water this past week, the snowpack is still dangerously low.

But Spring still sprung. With every seasonal symptom. Color and light and bees and flowers and vibrant greens everywhere. Softly soothing smells. And tulips.

Dutch Tulips by OPI www.beautymaniacs.org

Dutch Tulips by OPI
http://www.beautymaniacs.org

Chocolate Moose

Posted on April 3, 2014 by Nicki

Mine is famous – at least in these parts. By moose I mean mousse. And by mine I mean handed down to me by mother. At its best it’s light and creamy at the same time, rich but not too rich. The most delicate, palest shade of brown. And also, it’s non-dairy. Which is essential not only for those who are lactose-free, but also for the kosher kids who don’t eat dairy after that yummy brisket, or roast lamb, or honey-lemon chicken. First rule of keeping kosher: never mix meat and milk. Like ever. (Well maybe that’s the second rule – the first would probably be to eat only foods that are certified kosher!)

Dishes prepared without dairy or meat are called pareve (pronounced pa-rev) in the Jewish world. My chocolate mousse is perfectly pareve, and is often a highly anticipated dessert at holiday meals and festive Shabbat dinners, when the menu most always includes a meat of some kind. We celebrate most holidays and many Shabbats with my dear friend L and her family, and both her oldest daughter and her father have come to expect chocolate mousse – no matter what, whether at my house or hers.

At its worst (is there such a thing?), the color is a little off and the chocolate flavor is a little too intense – but nobody ever complains of too much chocolate! Sometimes the dark chocolate pieces don’t melt all the way through or it’s not mixed uniformly – again, little to elicit a negative response or even much notice.

There are other dishes I’m “known” for around here: a salad dressing that’s been described as “crack”, meat pies (also from my mom), pound cake (called minute cake in SA, this one’s from the International Goodwill Recipe Book, and enhanced by my late grandmother), raspberry tart (a favorite with L’s second daughter – those two girls think I’m the dessert queen, it’s fabulous!), “South African” cabbage salad (I’m not sure why but Jewish South Africans seem to be the only people who make cabbage salad this way in the U.S.).

My point is, while I’m certainly no cook extraordinaire, I can follow a recipe, get a little creative sometimes, and produce dishes that are tasty and even worthy of request.

So it was hard to hear that last Thursday night I produced “the worst meal” I’ve ever made. I quote.

He didn’t say it to be mean. Or critical. He said it because it was true. And he didn’t say it until I acknowledged what a god-awful meal it was. I’m reluctant to even call it a meal.

It was supposed to be spaghetti and meat sauce. A dish I make all the time. The kids ask for seconds and there are never leftovers. But too late I realized I didn’t have any of the tomato ingredients I needed, and I didn’t feel like getting creative right then. Whatever I did, or didn’t do, resulted in an inedible, almost indigestible mistake.

My family is really not that fussy about food – they just like to have food they can eat. Not only at meals, but all the time. “Eat a banana” is my mantra, as we run out of yogurt, cheese, frozen waffles, pretzels, cookies faster than I can replenish. As of right now, we are also out of bananas. Oh well.

So they all tried to eat that spaghetti and… um… meat thing. But as soon as I put my own fork down and announced that it really wasn’t very good, their relief was palpable. “I think this is the worst meal you’ve ever made,” my husband said. I prefer to think he meant the only bad meal I’ve ever made, but he was right. Cereal, frozen waffles and bananas for all that night.

The good thing is we have a barometer now! And I don’t think it can get worse than that meal – which takes the pressure off, for all of us (because those children will start cooking in the very near future – especially if they’re as starving as they claim to be and want more than a banana).

And my chocolate mousse is definitely more memorable. Yum!

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