About Nicki

South African by chance and Californian by choice, I live in the California Bay Area with my husband, four kids and Pretzel, the aging dachshund. As a reluctant yet full-time, barely-at-home mom, writer, avid reader, country music lover and wannabe surf diva, I write it like I see it - with tears, humor, skepticism, and truth. Keeping it real, for me. And hopefully for you too. I wear my red cowboy boots whenever I can - they make me feel like I can do anything, and when I do it, I'll rock it (that may or may not happen, depending on the day and also if it's raining - cowboy boots do not do well in the rain). They have come to represent the part of me that does not love being a stay-at-home mom, the part that wants to wander, explore and discover, and that sometimes does get to do all of that - both in real life, and on the page.

Storage Wars

Posted on December 7, 2014 by Nicki

It’s a cool, cloudy Saturday in December. There’s the potential for rain, and for clear skies. Some of us are up and already buttering toast at 7.17am, while some have decided on second thoughts today is not a workout day and wouldn’t it be wonderful if someone brought me a cup of tea right about now?

It’s early December and there’s much to think about: high school applications, the pants he needs for the wedding, pink ballet tights for next week’s Secret Nutcracker concert. Hopefully he makes it through the weekend with the pokey wire from his braces, definitely order dreidels for the Chanukah presentations, and now Pretzel is doing downward dog which means he needs to go out, so I guess I’ll get up and make my own tea.

And then through the open window I hear it. The scraping, muffled sound of boxes being pushed, dragged, stacked. An occasional huff. A very big puff. Oh. No. He’s clearing out the garage. Again.

(Please note I said clearing with an r, not cleaning with an n. When I noted that he was cleaNing the garage, he shot back with so much indignant vehemence that the garage is so spotless we could eat off the floor, I quickly recalibrated my word choice!)

The garage is his pride. And burden. An ongoing year-round project. Spring clean, summer clean, autumn and winter. And a few times in between. A free-standing structure at the end of the driveway, it’s large enough for a car and a minivan, a few bikes along the walls, three skateboards in the corner and a bunch of sports equipment neatly organized down the middle.

He is proud that he keeps it clean – I mean clear – enough that we can park our cars behind its black doors and not in the driveway every night. But we are six people living and growing out of clothes, soccer cleats, baseball bats, scooters, bikes faster than we can figure out what to do with it all. Did I mention the few dozen bins of girl and boy clothes tidily stacked floor to ceiling? The cars do fit in the garage, but the minivan driver may have almost flattened at least one of those bins, on more than one occasion. Luckily Boys Size 7-8 are soft and flattenable, even if the bin isn’t.

It’s a cool, maybe-rainy December day and there is so much to think about, plan for, take care of and definitely no time to clear out the garage – again – but that’s exactly where he is, again, and of course he needs me in there with him. Not to sort or organize or lift or unpack. That’s his one-man show and he’s brilliant at it. What he needs from me is to definitively say, right here and right now: Get rid of it!

Yes, get rid of the bins labeled 6-12, 18-24, 2T/3T. There are no more babies for this house. Yes, toss that box of fabric paint circa 1998. Paint does not last forever, and certainly not long enough for your paint muse to finally pay a visit almost two decades later. And hell yes definitely throw out the cassettes from the 80s, because a) there is no way to play them here in the future and b) they’re from the 80s and this is the future.

I find my Drama and Journalism binders from university, the contents outdated and irrelevant, my handwriting unchanged. I gingerly leaf through barely-held-together high school scrapbooks, precious photos, movie ticket stubs, birthday cards painstakingly placed on each page. Yellowed, aging memories slide out and spill into my lap as I sit on that spotless garage floor, the 20-year-old glue not so adhesive anymore. There’s a journal from camp, lines filled with writing I don’t recognize: “Dear Nix, I hope all your dreams come true.” The sweetest, sappiest notes from friends-for-eva who I vaguely remember and some I will never forget.

Part of me really wants to clear out the garage as much as he does. To be able to open my car door and not bump into a bicycle, not collide with a bin full of clothes or pop yet another basketball as I reverse.

But I can’t. I can’t throw any of it away. I can’t get rid of it. Not the baby clothes we have no need for anymore, but a nephew might. Not the old-fashioned cassettes (I labeled one of those “Slow Mix.” It must’ve taken me hours to make!), and definitely not the scrapbooks and journals. To read and remember my teen self is awkward, great, painful and wonderful all at once. Like floating on perfect ocean swells, and then suddenly getting tumbled and dumped by a frothy surprise wave that leaves my eyes burning, my nose running and my bathing suit disheveled just enough to reveal a little too much for a moment.

I don’t think of myself as a keeper of things. I love to pare down, de-clutter, and hang on to only what we need and use. But these childhood things that we’ve brought with us halfway around the world, schlepped from apartment to rental and finally to this house where we’ve created our family and our big grown-up life are the things that tell the story of me. And keeping those things, that story, feels way more important than an empty garage.

I grab my phone to take a photo of those old cassette tapes.

“There is not enough storage to take a photo,” it says. “You can manage your storage blah blah blah.”

This is a Finish the Sentence Friday post, inspired by the prompt,”If they made a reality show about my life, it would be called…” Hosted by Kristi from Finding Ninee and Stephanie from Mommy, for Real, and guest hosts Michelle from Crumpets and Bullocks and April from 100lb Countdown.

About Last Night’s Leftovers

Posted on November 29, 2014 by Nicki

The silence wakes me.

Not a whisper. Not a murmur. No ever-growing feet pounding down the stairs. No 7am yells of “jerk, that’s mine.” No muffled electronic music from the Nintendo DS. What is it they play? Smash-something?

Just quiet.

The TV sits black and silent. The remote untouched since yesterday. Neat and aligned on the kitchen counter, right where I placed it before I went to bed last night. It’s not often I get to see it, let alone set it somewhere. It’s the hottest item in the house, the “merote.” Whoever holds it possesses those invincible powers of channel control. Powers not to be taken lightly. The fun teen mishaps on the Disney channel can ruin ones day if it’s the darkness of “Gotham” they desire.

So they hang on to that remote because really their happiness depends on it. Or they hide it amongst the stale chip crumbs and candy wrappers under the bouncy cushions of the sofa. And then pretend they don’t know where it is. So we’re stuck with Cartoon Network. Ninjago forever. There’s yelling. And wrestling. And my bedroom is directly above the playroom, so it’s not only Sensei Wu’s creepy Lego voice coloring my serene Saturday morning dreams, it’s also relentless cries of “Give it” punctured with an occasional “Ow” (is there anything more ear-shattering than the low foghorn of a newly-deepened teenage boy voice?). All before 7.09am. Most Saturdays.

But this morning all was still. The remote benignly in plain sight, powerless as it should be.

And I am up before 7.09am.

Even though there’s no yelling. No fighting. No noise. No extra-loud “Good morning, Mom” to retrieve the iPad in stealth. And definitely no wet kiss on my sleepy cheek.

We are half this week. One dad, two bigs away doing adventurous boy things: planes, trains, rugby and rain. One mom, two littles at home doing not that much: cousins, beach, classic movies like “Annie” and “Mrs. Doubtfire.”

The quiet is welcome. The kitchen stays clean. The laundry basket is barely full and there is no room for yesterday’s leftover pizza in the suddenly too full fridge. We never have leftovers. Nobody nags for a friend to come over or to go to Target or leaves wet towels on the carpet. Instead of no I say yes: to ice cream, to staying up late, to overpriced magnets at Fisherman’s Wharf. “You’re the best mommy ever,” they chirp with their arms around each other.

But we are half. And what I am is some kind of half-mommy. While less of them should mean more of me, we are incomplete. And so am I.

It is calm and neat and the washing machine is at rest. But the quiet is strange. Uncomfortable. This is not who we are, half of ourselves. Half the conversations, half the laughter, 50 per cent less awkward hugs and sloppy kisses, way less muddy clothes sweaty from intense hide-and-seek in the backyard. Too many leftovers.

I talk and write about my family chaos a lot. How I long for it to be a little quieter. Not so hectic. How I wish there were less groceries, less shoes, less dentist appointments and haircuts. More room, more time for thoughts and words and yes instead of no.

But that would make us not us.

The weak early morning sunrays reflect off the dull silver of the remote. It waits, untouched. When I open the fridge the pizza box slides out from its precarious spot, squeezed above the unopened gallons of milk. It lands on the floor with a loud thwack that echoes around the empty kitchen.

Only one more night of leftovers.

What the Gruesome Images from the Jerusalem Terror Attack Taught Me About Hope

Posted on November 19, 2014 by Nicki

bottom image source: The Jerusalem Post

The images are gruesome. Heartwrenching. So much blood. I don’t want to see. And for a while I don’t. Not really. I scroll quickly from one post to the next. Four killed in terror attack. Har Nof. Rabbis. Synagogue. Even as my heart is rushing and the tears are falling, my fingers slow down. To read. And to see. To really see.

A blood-soaked tallit (prayer shawl) crouches in crumpled horror. The red-splattered bookshelves stand feebly by. They are a quiet, ueseless protection to the forever stained siddurim (prayer books) they hold. Kehillat Bnei Torah Synagogue is a bloodbath.

“No. No. Nonononono,” I whisper, now unable to stop the onslaught of image after horrific image.

It’s the one of the bloodied tefillin-wrapped arm that stops me cold. His lifeless hand is curled around the ends of his tefillin, and his tallit is blemished with the hatred of others. Whose arm is it?

This Is The Sound a Vinegar Van Makes

Posted on November 15, 2014 by Nicki

My father’s father owned a vinegar factory in South Africa. Born and grown in Lithuania, my gentle grandfather migrated south to the bottom of Africa via Israel as a very young adult. There he married my grandmother, raised three sons, and made vinegar.

One of the first sounds I ever heard in my life was my father blowing a very loud, put-put-puttering noise through his nose and mouth. “This is what my father’s vinegar van sounded like,” he would say. And do it again.

I don’t know how he creates that sound, with his nose, tongue and palette. But if I don’t have my eyes firmly turned to his at the time, I would swear there is an old, rusty, white van spluttering down the street outside, delivering vinegar.

He made that sound when we were crying. He made it when we were bored. He made it to distract us, to entice a laugh, when we asked him to do it and especially when we didn’t. And always it had the same effect: wide-eyed astonishment and giggles!

The scraped knee stopped hurting. The whiny baby forgot she was hungry. The kid brother ceased annoying me, and even the grown-ups would laugh. Misery, pain, attention diverted by the funny imitation of the vinegar van.

My dad is a mostly cheery, good-natured, laidback kinda guy who is most comfortable amidst jokes and laughter. Sometimes witty, usually corny, he cracks jokes almost all the time and shares funny stories whenever he can. Most of them we’ve heard many times over, and while they get old they never get tired. Not to me, anyway!

“What’s yellow and points north?”

“Um… dunno. What?”

“A magnetic banana!” Ba-dum-bum.

His humor is pure. He is funny because he wants to be. Because he wants to make the people around him laugh. Because funny is often more satisfying than sadness, anger, worry, or even hunger. And if it’s possible to smooth the frown, laugh through the tears, lighten the moment, why not tell a corny joke or make a weird and wonderful sound?

Sadly, I did not inherit my dad’s natural aptitude for making people laugh. I don’t have innate comedic timing, my brain is not quick-witted, and my jokes are usually dry and sarcastic, sometimes funny, often obscure and never the type that leave giggles and “Tell that one again.”

But the magical effect of the spluttering vinegar van has taught me the power of laughter, the power of brightening the mood and blowing away the gray, if only for a few silly minutes so that when the hurt knee is remembered, when the difficult conversation resumes, somehow it doesn’t sting as much as it did before.

“What’s yellow and very dangerous?”

“Um, a spray painted vinegar van?”

“No! Shark-infested custard! But have you ever heard what my dad’s old vinegar sounded like?”

source: cartoonstock.com

This is a Finish the Sentence Friday post, inspired by the prompt, “The best advice my father ever gave me was…” Hosted by Kristi from Finding Ninee and Stephanie from Mommy, for Real, and guest hosts Michelle from Crumpets and Bullocks and Ruchira from Abracabadra.

Everyone’s Included in Monkey in the Middle and What Kind of Bat Mitzvah Will She Have

Posted on November 12, 2014 by Nicki

A boisterous game of “Monkey in the Middle” overtook our family room after Shabbat dinner last week. Astonishingly, nothing was broken and nobody got hurt. Laughter, happy yelling, and lots of good-natured teasing kept the blue-and-white beach ball airborne and away from the “monkey,” who in this game, was my daughter.

My only little girl is a feisty 8-year-old. She holds her own with big green-gray eyes, a smattering of freckles, a knowing smile, and a steely grip amid the three brothers who love nothing more than to give her a hard time about, well, everything: that she mispronounces “bird,” that she’s something of a busybody, that she prefers to keep her room testosterone-free, and yells “out” as soon as a male body, canine or human, places a smelly toe over the threshold.