Red Boots

from dancing to walking and everything in between… and beyond

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.

Are we there yet?

Posted on April 1, 2014 by Nicki

19

Anticipation.

Makes me shiver. With excitement. And nerves. It’s daunting, overwhelming even. But also awesome.

Like waiting to run that 10km or half marathon – I’ve never run any greater distance, but I imagine that would be like this on steroids! Part of me wants to give up before I’ve even begun, and the rest knows how amazing it will feel once I’m over the hump, once I’m in it and the endorphins take over. The zone of mindless effort.

And I know how it will feel once I reach the end, cross the finish line, when the blood roars in my ears so it sounds as if the whole world is cheering for me. Weak legs, hard to breathe. I know I will bend over double, with my hands on my hips, gulping air. A little bit sick, and a lot exhilarated. Because it’s the end, and I finished, but also because of the sheer physical endurance – to make my body and my mind work that way, to push myself, to experience many moments of doubt and even despair but not give in to them. Exhilarated. Accomplished.

Anticipation.

I am blogging from A to Z in the month of April: the challenge is to post every day this month, except Sundays. That works out to 26 days – one day for each letter of the alphabet. My letter days will correspond to OPI’s nail polish colors, to enhance my fascination (obsession?) with the names OPI chooses for their hundreds of hues.

Here I go.

Are we there yet?

Are We There Yet by OPI ommorphiabeautybar.com

Ninety-eight and still has chutzpah!

Posted on March 17, 2014 by Nicki

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He can barely see. One eye is completely covered by a cataract, and the other looks pretty blank to me. Those big ears of his do not hear much anymore. He definitely can’t hear me calling him. His bladder has shrunk. Or disappeared altogether. His bones are old and his hair is almost white. So for a 14-year-old he’s in pretty good shape!

Of course, that’s 98 in dog years. Or is it 98 in people years and 14 in dog years? I get confused. All I know is that there’s a multiple of seven involved. And today is his fourteenth birthday. I’m feeling strangely sentimental and emotional about my aging dachshund, whose bark drives me crazy and who is causing way too much unnecessary stress between me and Ryan – it’s that shrinking bladder, the midnight and 3am excursions outside, the high-pitched bark at nothing and everything because the poor creature can’t see much… an aging dachshund is eerily similar to a newborn baby. Been there, done that!

Pretzel was our first.

It was a beautiful spring day much like today when we drove up to Santa Rosa to get him. He was teeny. He fit in my two cupped palms. His mom’s name was Ruby and his dad was Spike – they were all small standard, red, short-haired dachshunds. Just adorable. I don’t remember how we chose Pretzel. But we did. And on the way home he curled up on my lap, tucked his then-short nose and feet in toward each other, all twisty and pretzely. By the time we got back to San Francisco, his name was Pretzel. Perfect.

(Weeks later I discovered there was a children’s book about an extra-long, heroic dachshund named Pretzel, written and illustrated by Margaret and H.A. Rey. Serendipity. We have several copies of that book. It’s one of our favorites. Along with The Halloweiner. And Schnitzel von Krumm.)

Now I’m not a crazy dog-lover. I like dogs. I do love some dogs. I always had a dog growing up, and I think a pet is wonderful to have in a household. They love you unconditionally. To love and take care of them is incredibly fulfilling and heartwarming. They bring life and warmth and fun and gentleness and craziness, and hair, and extra work, and mess and happy licks and wagging tails and lots of walks and special moments of quiet and peace. And before I had kids, and when I was working from home, Pretzel was my life and I may have become a crazy dog-lover – which is easy to do in a crazy, dog-loving city like San Francisco!

I took him to the beach and when his short, little legs couldn’t carry him anymore I scooped him up and bundled him into my fleece. We spent hours in Dolores Park each day, and made friends with every dachshund and chihuahua in the City. He slept in our bed from night one, curled up right next to me or at my feet – and I have not met a dachshund parent anywhere in the US, London, Sydney or South Africa whose dachshund does NOT sleep in their bed. They are bred to burrow, and since they are not running down rabbit holes or hunting badgers in these urban environs, they burrow into sheets and blankets – warmest bed-partners ever. Even Ryan agrees.

Babies in strollers were no competition for jaunty Pretzel on those San Francisco hills. That proud little dachshund could barely strut three feet down Union Street without being stopped and petted and questioned and tickled. My new-mommy friends were not impressed as their bonny, bouncy six-month olds – cute as they were – were blatantly ignored. Want attention? Get a dachshund!

We had fun times, Pretzie and I. He was friendly, and social, high-energy and obedient. He barked a lot when the doorbell rang, and he would pee if he got too excited (doesn’t everybody?) but he quickly became part of the Gilberts, like all pets integrate into their families. On his first Rosh Hashana with us, I hosted a large buffet-style dinner. “Can I give him my leftovers?” asked my sister, one of Pretzel’s biggest fans. “Absolutely not!” I replied. I would make him his own plate of brisket and kugel! By the end of the evening that little belly of his, already mere inches from the ground, was dragging.

My proud Pretzel does not have my undivided attention anymore. During the last twelve years he’s slipped lower and lower on my list of Beating Hearts That Need my Love and Patience. His loud, incessant barking whenever the doorbell rang caused immediate spasms in my jaw as I shushed him because a baby was sleeping. He would steal the kids’ food. He’s been skunked twice – admittedly that’s more my fault than his, but man, what a pain (tomato juice does not help)! His nails need clipping, his teeth need cleaning, he has a weak-ish heart. He is no longer my first. He’s my very, very last.

Of course I still love him. And care for him. He still sleeps in my bed – although he can’t jump up anymore, I have to lift him. I pick him up under his arms just like he’s one of my kids. And I carry him down the stairs – those long spines don’t manage the descent so well over time. He doesn’t bark when the doorbell rings because he can’t hear it – not that it would matter, nobody is taking a nap no more! And he has more people than ever to love him – most notably the youngest. I often find the two of them twisted around each other on the couch, one stroking the other’s ears.

Pretzel cannot see the food that drops on the floor right near his long nose, and he can’t jump up onto my bed – but this morning I came home to discover that nose had found its way high up onto the dining room table and into the gift bags full of hamantashen (cookies I’d baked for the Jewish holiday of Purim). He had helped himself to a few. Now that is chutzpah!

He is 14/98 years old today – and it is clear he is not going anywhere, this doggedly determined dachshund. Till 120 they say in Hebrew, when someone has a birthday. Pretzel, may you live till at least 120: a full, fun life, surrounded by so many who love you.

This is 40?

Posted on March 11, 2014 by Nicki

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I was always the youngest. Not at home, at home I was the oldest. But everywhere else I was usually the youngest. The youngest in my grade. The youngest in my ballet or drama class. Because I have the southern hemisphere equivalent of a fall birthday – mid-May.

And half a world and many decades away, where the seasons are turned upside down, and where my birthday is now in the spring, I am still the youngest.

My 40^th birthday is two months away. Thanks to a severe drought and global warming, spring has already sprung in Northern California. So it’ll be early summer by then. The fragrant jasmine will have wilted on their stems, leaving little more than the faintest heady whiff in the breeze.

For a while I was “never turning 40.” As friend after friend – some with two to four kids of their own, and companies to run, with aging parents and mortgages and expiring car leases – made it ‘over the hill’, turned 41 or 43 or 47, I was still in my thirties. In the same pick-up line as they were, rushing kids to ERs just like they were, signing tax returns and home loans and sometimes feeling older than even my older friends whose kids were a few years younger than mine, or who didn’t want to get married just yet.

Almost 40. With responsibilities and people, both big and little, and deadlines and obligations and appointments and a full life of color behind me, and a big blue something ahead… but I’m not excited. I’m scared. Confused. So unsure. So not confident. I wish I was 24. When I knew myself better.

Of course, hindsight is always crisply clear – the view of myself as the self-confident, sure-of-herself young woman starting her life on the foggy hills of San Francisco as Mrs Gilbert is vivid and bright, while the vision of ageing, graying me finally moving to Israel once all my kids are grown is hazy and almost impossible to see. Not just because it’s the future, and who knows what the future holds, but because… is that what I really want to do? Do I want to leave all my kids behind and move to another country without them? Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know. If I stop being a stay-at-home mom now, will I regret it in ten years when they’ve all left (actually it’s 13 years, but who’s counting)? Do I want to write, or act, or teach, or own a boutique or work in a bookstore or WHAT?

I am 60-something days away from the fabulous-not-so-fabulous four oh. Confused. Confuzzled (my mother’s word). Just mixed up.

On a rare rainy day in Sonoma last week, after I declared to my best girlfriends that I knew myself better when I was in my twenties than I do now, I realized that’s not quite true. Or rather, they helped me realize it’s not true. That what I was in my seemingly cool, calm and collected twenties was blissfully oblivious… to me. And I started thinking about the things I do know:

I know that I don’t know. I know that I am confuzzled. I may be less self-assured, less self-confident than ever before – but I have heaps of self-awareness. And then some. Enough to drive me even crazier than I am now, before I make it to 50. Or even 45. Gulp.

I know that it’s more than okay to say “no”. Not to alcohol. Or to cupcakes. But to commitments. To volunteering. To having someone else’s kid over. To attending an event. To anything that is something I do not want to do. Or that will take me away from doing something I really do want to do. People understand. In fact, I think they wish they had said no too.

That sometimes my “greatest accomplishment of the day is making my bed.” This is something my close friend L always says – she is five years calmer, wiser and older than me. She reminds me that I don’t have to do it all – actually, I don’t have to do any. That the all or the nothing is overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be that way. And damn, she’s right about the bed: it does feel all kinds of good to yank those sheets straight, and tuck the loose ends under.

I know that I love meat. And marrow bones.

To cry is to feel. And that is wonderful. I used to keep my tears in, because I didn’t want to face the emotional hot mess they left in their wake. But I’ve discovered how awesome tears are – the relief and release to not have to keep it all together. To feel whenever I want. Even wherever I want. Like in my workout class. Or in the car. Sadness and joy and love and fear and songs and memories.

I don’t get hangovers. Obviously I’m not drinking enough. Goal for my forties: wake up with a hangover.

There’s never an excuse for bad manners. Say hello. Say goodbye. Say please and thank you. Always. Whether you’re four, or 14 or 57. Do not get out my car and slam the door without saying, “Thanks for the ride.” Wish the barmitzvah boy and his parents mazal tov, and if you want something from me, please say please! Manners make people nice people, manners maketh the mensch.

Accept apologies – they are heartfelt, even if they don’t sound like they are.

Skinny jeans can ruin my day as I lie on the floor or wriggle my hips trying to zip them up – they did fit last week. But my sister, and sometimes my brother, saves the day (and this is true for much in my life):

Finally, no matter what artistic brilliance, technologically advanced special effects, incredible animation, outstanding acting, writing or directing we have enjoyed over the last three decades the very best movies are, and always will be, Eighties Movies: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Breakfast Club, Moonstruck, Indiana Jones, Say Anything. Don’t you order what she’s having? Do you ever put Baby in a corner? Who doesn’t love to cut loose with Kevin and Kenny? Best. Movies. Ever.

I am the last of my friends to turn 40. I’m the youngest. And I feel more confused now than at any other time in my life. Blissfully oblivious, like I was in my twenties, sounds kinda appealing, I admit. But oblivious is really just oblivious – I’m not sure it’s blissful at all.

I’ll take marrow bones, Maverick and no hangover for now.

E.T. Phone Home

Posted on February 25, 2014 by Nicki

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My teenage boy is an alien. And by alien I mean foreign. Far away from me. It’s not so much that I don’t understand him, or that he communicates as if he’s from another planet. There is some of that going on some of the time, but I’m learning to decode and even speak that language (Mmm mmm mmm means “I don’t know” in Teenglish). It’s more like he and I are in different countries, and we call each other only when necessary. To check in. Or remind him to wash his face. Or ask me to email the karate teacher.

He’s actually not quite a teenager – he’s 12 and a half. Exactly. And I know much is likely to change in the next six months before his barmitzvah. His voice might break. He could grow a whole foot. The glimpses of sullenness and defiance I’m seeing now will probably turn into full-scale epic movies of extreme emotion. I’m bracing myself for way more drama than when I took him to buy “nice” clothes and he grabbed the pants the sales lady held out to him, and actually threw them on the floor. At her feet. Apparently he doesn’t like dressy clothes – frayed cargo khakis and a polo shirt are as “dressed up” as this NorCal boy will go. Thankfully the lovely lady at Nordstrom has two grown sons of her own and remembers those days. But I cringed in horror as I watched my usually even-tempered, go-with-the-flow boy flail in frustration.

We don’t need much from each other, he and I. He usually just gets on with it. Walks to and from school. Even in the rain. Grabs a snack for himself. Does his homework. Gets consistently good grades with seemingly little stress and effort. Brushes his teeth without being told. Jokes with his brothers. Loves his Rubik’s cube. Reads sci-fi books. Watches Psych and Modern Family. I sign his math test or reading log when he asks, he doesn’t beg me to drive on field trips, casually mentions we’re out of frozen waffles (his breakfast of choice) but is happy to find something else to eat.

We spend a little time together in the car, just the two of us, when I take him to his barmitzvah lessons or to karate. But even then we don’t talk much. He answers my questions about school and friends with no more than three to four words. Not in a moody teenage way, just very matter-of-fact. Sometimes he’ll give me a fun fact, or relay a quick story. Ask me why humans are born with an appendix. As we drive passed the park he might yell out the window to someone. “Who’s that?” I ask. “My friend. Michael. He’s in my Spanish class.” Oh.

Remember when I knew all his friends, and their parents, and where they lived? When I could picture him at recess playing basketball or foursquare with those friends, knowing what he was eating for lunch because I packed it for him?

I’m not sad that he’s growing up, becoming independent. I’m not feeling nostalgic or wistfully remembering when he was so attached to me he cried solidly all day every day for the first three weeks of preschool. In my mother-heart I know that he is happy, and thriving, and enjoying his seventh grade life – even if he doesn’t share the details with me. He still loves to eat the cake batter out the bowl. And I leave the chocolate chips out of the banana bread – he hates chocolate.

Our long-distance relationship works for both of us. He’ll happily babysit the younger ones if I ask him to (meaning, if I pay him to). He helps me unload the trunk, fixes his sister breakfast, explains the math problem to his brother. All with no fuss. Unfazed. I can’t remember the last time he needed help from me or his dad, with anything. Schoolwork. A difficult social situation. A problem with a teacher. I don’t worry if he doesn’t come home straight after school, or wonder what he’s getting up to online. Girls are still just friends, if they exist at all in his world, and on the rare occasion I catch sight of him on campus or on the soccer field, he is engaged and social.

His baby brother wakes up wailing, and I bury myself further under the covers. I hear him crying and mumbling to himself, trying to get dressed, but I don’t move. And suddenly this little guy is at my bedside in the half-dark room, and before I even open my mouth to ask what’s wrong, the big almost-man-brother in dinosaur pajama pants is taking him by the hand and leading him out. “I’ll help you,” he says. As if he knows that I need just ten minutes more of quiet.

I am so thankful for this easy boy. Because son number two is not easy – needs so much from me all the time, and always has. Wants to talk and process and find out what I’m feeling and thinking, needs help with his homework, pounds his drums when frustrated or yells that he’s running away from home. And daughter and baby boy have requirements of their own, one being a second grade girl in a family of boys, and the other the youngest of four. Part of the fun and challenge of being a parent, navigating the different personalities and needs and moods of each child. And I wouldn’t have it any different (well, maybe a little different – like just one kid less). But my Big Easy Boy means a little less stress, a quarter of calmness in the frenzy, 25 percent more headspace for something or someone else.

And in his not-neediness I keep him in mind. Fix him an after-school snack. It’s a one-off thing. I’m not even sure if he’s coming home from school. Pastrami on a challah roll with the baby gherkins that he loves – no mayo, no mustard. I leave it on the kitchen counter on a plate, next to a note scribbled on a piece of scrap paper I fished out of the recycling: Daniel. Love Mom. I use the faintest black gel pen. Minimal effort. Minimal fuss. It feels like the most maternal thing I’ve done since I stopped breastfeeding the youngest three years ago.

He calls as soon as he gets home from school.

“Mom? So yeah I got the sandwich… it’s nice.”

I love you, Mom. And I know you love me.

challah

Reposted today as inspired by the Finish the Sentence Friday prompt: “I know my child would rather I not reveal this…” Hosts: Kristi from Finding Ninee and Stephanie from Mommy, for Real. Guest Hosts: Kelly from Just Typikel and Anna from Fitfunner.

I wish I knew what she was thinking

Posted on February 13, 2014 by Nicki

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That blank stare.

I never knew if she was happy, angry, sad, pissed off at me, or maybe not understanding my fast, accented English. Was it not okay that I dumped the groceries in the kitchen and then dashed out again? Should I not have asked her to clean the pantry if she has time? I just never knew what she was thinking.

Hard to get an emotional read on an already sensitive situation: employer-employee, woman to woman, have versus have-not.

I am sensitive to it because of how I grew up, with housekeepers and gardeners. Somebody to make breakfast and wash the dishes, unpack the groceries, do the laundry, water the garden, feed the dog, keep the bathrooms clean and the house tidy. That was how most white South Africans grew up. Somebody to babysit us when my parents went out, or for my little brother to stay with when my mom watched me and my sister at ballet recitals and drama festivals. Somebody, or two somebodies, to help. They made our beds, played with us. Because our parents worked and also because they didn’t. I know many Americans and Mexicans and Brits and Israelis and Brazilians who grew up the same way. With hired help.

It’s the way of the world in certain countries and in specific socio-economic communities – those that can and have and need to and want to employ those that will and have not. Employer-employee. It works like that.

Except of course, it’s not so simple. It’s not just employer-employee. It’s a system laden with undercurrents of guilt, with feelings of superiority and inferiority, of not wanting to offend or insult but still wanting the job done right, of wanting to do the job right but feeling unsure or insecure.

I’m sensitive to it because now I’m a part of it. Now I am navigating this complex emotionally fraught system. Equal parts expectation, responsibility, guilt and gratitude.

She came to work for us seven years ago, when my daughter was four months old. With barely any English at first, she quickly became indispensible to me. I hadn’t had consistent help before, and it was a relief to be able to leave this child asleep in her bed, and not in her car seat, while I drove a carpool. To go to Target unaccompanied. To have all the laundry washed, dried, folded and put away before noon, and by someone else. To come home to a house smelling of Pine Sol and orange floor cleaner. To have an extra pair of hands on deck when one was blowing bubbles in the bathtub and one was about to hurl herself down the stairs, while yet another was making a beeline for the dog food.

But if I spoke too quickly, if I told her not to take the baby to the park, if I asked her to stay late or leave early or do it a different way, she would look at me, with no expression in her face. “Shit,” I thought. “Is she mad at me? Did I say something wrong? Something offensive?” I hated to think that she felt silent or silenced, that she couldn’t tell me what she really felt or thought. Or that G-d forbid she didn’t love me all the time. That she wasn’t happy.

I was uncomfortable in this role, as employer of this woman – not much younger than me – who was taking care of my children and cleaning my house, putting away my underwear, hearing my arguments with my husband, throwing birthday parties in the park for my babies at her own expense. Birthday parties with piñatas and carefree fun and Spanish songs and laughter. The birthday parties they remember in living color.

This woman, who had left her parents and her seven brothers and sisters and her home in Guatemala at the age of 22, and walked across Mexico for eight days and nights in harrowing conditions until she somehow made her way to Oakland and to me. Mercifully unscathed on the outside, but what about the inside?

I had left my country and my family too. But that was the only similarity between us. I was uncomfortable with what I had and what she didn’t. Citizenship. Financial resources. Language. Her parents would travel hours to her brother’s house just to Skype with her – mine flew across time zones to visit me in the flesh. And I could go to South Africa, or Guatemala, or anywhere in the world whenever I wanted.

Did she begrudge me? Did I act spoilt? Ungrateful? Was that the blank stare?

After seven years of taking care of me, of loving my babies, chopping my vegetables, making my bed, speaking my language, spending time with my parents, her longing to go home was burning so strongly in her heart, I could feel it across the kitchen counter.

So she did.

Her return journey to me was one of unknown peril and fear and angst. Eight months of collect calls. Of tears and worry. She said she was fine. Treated well. They would let her in, she was sure of it. But I could hear the doubt in her voice. I could feel the regret in her heart. I wasn’t sure we would ever see her again.

Yesterday was her birthday. She turned 32. Her first day back at work. In my house.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, her eyes blank.

“Really?” I pressed.

She continued folding one of the boys’ t-shirts. And with no expression in her face, or her voice, her dark eyes looked honestly into my green ones:

“I’m happy. This, your house, is my second house. My home.”