Late. Again.

Posted on January 11, 2015 by Nicki

Our kitchen is probably the most important space in our house. For the fridge, the pantry, and the missing Legos I shoved in a drawer. For the haphazard pile of mail on the counter, and the blue hydrangea in the hand painted jar on the windowsill. For the owl-shaped cookie jar filled with British chocolate, and the day’s newspapers and empty cereal boxes shoved into a Trader Joe’s brown paper bag to be recycled – in which I found the check for the fifth grade school trip and also the homework I thought was scratch paper.

And for the large, flat calendar that sits quietly on the counter in the corner.

Amid a tissue box, a tin of Sharpies, and a 13-year-old steadily growing bamboo plant, the calendar displays both the secular and Jewish months, national and religious holidays, and most importantly, where and when we all need to to be on a daily basis. My one and only crafty project, at the beginning of the month I sit with a different color pen for each of us and record all upcoming activities, lessons, appointments, parties and trips.

Without the calendar, we all have a pretty concrete sense of what is happening in our lives, but the visual representation of the day, the week, the month, laid out in pretty colors and organized by person brings necessary calm and order to a very noisy, chaotic kitchen. Somehow, if it’s not on the calendar, it’s not happening.

You would think that with my carefully crafted schedule laid out in red, blue, pink, orange and purple, that with this daily, colorful reminder of where, when and who, I would be able to get myself and my people where we need to be with minimal confusion and frenzy, and without frantic yells of, “Come on, we’re going to be late!” Every. Single. Time.

Or maybe you wouldn’t think that. But I would. I do. I think that it is a shame, a sad shame, that a person who used to leave home with plenty of time to drive an unfamiliar route and find a parking spot in a crowded Oakland neighborhood, who prided herself on punctuality and hardly ever kept someone waiting, even when there was traffic, is now always (and I mean always) five minutes late. On a good day.

“I think this is going to be our first fight,” says my dear, non-confrontational friend of 12 years, with undisguised disgust at having to wait for me. Again.

Running five minutes late I text my sister, as I spy the keys I couldn’t find still in the door. And by five minutes I mean at least 11 minutes, but I’m too ashamed to admit I’m only leaving the house now, at the time we agreed to meet.

I call the dentist on the way to my appointment. Tell my son he should walk home because I’m stuck in traffic. I’m late for the vet, the hairdresser, library duty, dinner. And I know it’s only a few minutes, and people are mostly forgiving and understanding (even my friend who is sick of waiting for me; we didn’t fight). I know that in reality the unpredictability of life creates loud disorder and mayhem out of even the most color-coded, organized moments.

But I hate that lately, I am always late. No matter what.

My kids pore over that all-important calendar in the kitchen every day. They delight in the colors, the visual simplicity, the predictable schedule, and mostly in knowing what’s going to happen next: later today, tomorrow, next weekend. One of their favorite days is the first of the month, because they get to rip off the month that was and see the uncluttered potential of the month ahead.

After two long winter weeks away from the scheduled days of the calendar, when we returned home on January 5 they went straight to the kitchen. They ignored the happy barking of Pretzel the dachshund, and clamored around the curling page of December.

“Mom, can we rip it?” Their hopeful faces turned to me. They were four days late already.

The answer left my lips before I even had time to think about it: “No! Just leave it for now. I’m not ready.”

Not ready. Not ready to record the everyday activities into the blank spaces of this month. Not quite ready to jump into January, even though it’s already started. Not ready to let go of 2014, just yet. To leave those moments: those wonderful, difficult, terrifying, incredible, saddest, happiest moments that I will never have again.

I left the kids staring longingly at the stained days of December, in the kitchen crowded with unopened mail and newspapers still reporting 2014, and slowly headed upstairs.

I hate leaving the moment I’m in. Whether it’s a book or the laundry or the conversation I’m having, the quiet of the car, the paragraph I’m writing, the hot shower, or brushing my daughter’s hair into a ponytail. I find it difficult to move smoothly onto the next thing. The next moment. So I linger in this one.

Just five more minutes.

This is a Finish the Sentence Friday post, inspired by the prompt, “You should vote for me for president because…” Hosted by Kristi from Finding Ninee, and guest hosts Michelle from Crumpets and Bollocks and Anna from Fitfunner. You should vote for me for president of the Let’s Be Five Minutes Late Club, because I will never let you down! Even this post is almost five minutes late.

The Bravest Thing I’ve Ever Done

Posted on December 11, 2014 by Nicki

They decorate the air with sails of green and red and turquoise and yellow. They dance on gusts of invisible wind, giant soaring birds doing the tango. Strong and silent. Free and flying. The ocean is every shade of blue. And foamy white. I want to be there, on the waves, in the air.

It must take a lot of physical strength to dance with the wind like that. To fly on water. Strong arms to hold that sail. Strong legs to stay upright. Powerful inside to keep balanced. So much strength. And stamina.

And courage. To fly into the wide open sky. To let the wind lead. It must take a lot of courage and steeled, unbreakable, unbendable nerves to give over like that. To unknown waters, unpredictable wind.

I’m not sure I’m brave enough.

***

It’s a little more than a year since I hit publish for the very first time. I wrote about my longing to live in Israel, and I called it Kiteboarders Do Come Back. I published it on the wonderful Israeli-based news site, Times of Israel. It was 11pm at night. I was terrified.

My heart thundered in my chest. I don’t know why I did it so late at night. The noise in my head, in my ears, in my heart deafeningly drowned out any possibility of sleep. Every nerve ending quivered, from my intestines to my toenails and the tips of my eyelashes. Real. Fear.

I’ve never jumped out a plane to go skydiving, or leapt off a cliff with a hang glider, or taken to the ocean with nothing but a board, a sail and the wind between me and the sun. But I’m pretty sure this feeling of terror overpowers every shred of exhilaration in anticipation of these extreme, courageous feats. Before that adrenaline kicks in, before “Hey, I’m doing this, I’m flying, I’m REALLY DOING THIS,” must come “Oh. My. G-d,” and “W T F” and “I thought this was a good idea WHY?”

As soon as I hit that button I felt like I’d blindly leapt off a cliff. Sick with fear. Shaking with terror. That I’d made a mistake. Done the wrong thing. I wasn’t sure if I’d crash in a heap of broken somethings (heart, pride, feelings to start) or if I’d be lucky enough to feel the briefest whisper of wind in my too-short hair.

My kite boarder moment.

***

I love to write. To turn inward and be present and thoughtful with myself. To listen to my own thoughts, feelings, opinions and then name them with words on a white page right with my own fingers, before my eyes. It took a long time for me to feel comfortable to do even that, but I knew if I didn’t I was either going to drown in my own unnamed words, or fish them out of the deep blue where I could see them, count them, describe them, hate them, love them.

And it’s one thing to hold those words up to the light where I can see them. It’s another to hold them out for others to see.

Hitting publish is leaping off the cliff. It’s standing on stage in front of a packed theater and forgetting your lines (that has happened to me). It’s taking off on a board in the Bay, with a bright green sail above you, not knowing if you’ll make it back to shore or be tossed under the Golden Gate and far into the wild Pacific.

It’s unknown. And it’s terrifying.

And exhilarating.

I published that first piece about Israel because I didn’t know what else to do with my thoughts and feelings. They confused and troubled me. I wrote them out. Which helped, but didn’t quiet the restless grumbling I heard inside. So I held them out for others to read, in the hope that feedback, validation, discussion would help me find peace and fulfillment. It was not the first piece I wrote, but it was the first I showed to more than a friend or two.

And for so many moments after clicking the publish button, my arms went weak. My whole body shook and I lost my balance on that board. The sail slackened, and I regretted it all. Overshare, TMI, who cares if I want to live in Israel or that my dog is old or that my kids only talk to me when I’m in the bathroom!

But the wind caught the sail just so. And my arms felt strong again, and I took a deep breath. And did a tiny dance on the waves.

It’s scary, every time, to reveal these little and not so little parts of me in stark black words on a white page. But then the wind catches and gently ruffles my hair, and it’s more fulfilling to put it out there, than not to.

It’s exhilarating. To have found the courage. To feel brave.

Now if only I could learn to kite board.

This is a Finish the Sentence Friday post, inspired by the prompt,”I’ve never had the courage to…” Hosted by Kristi from Finding Ninee, and guest hosts Tarana from Sand in My Toes and Vidya from Vidya Sury.

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.

What Did You Want to Be When You Were at College?

Posted on November 10, 2014 by Nicki

Her green-gray eyes always get straight to the heart of the matter.

“A journalist,” I promptly reply. Live on CNN. Big dreams.

“You could’ve been famous, Mom,” those eyes so earnest, so certain.

I smile at her certainty. At her pure eight-year-old belief that if only I had become what I wanted to be then, I would be famous.

“But when I’m a famous actress and singer, then you’ll be famous because I’m your daughter.” Pause. “NYU has an acting school, right?”

The notion of Fame is irresistibly attractive to her. Recognition, adoration, attention. She loves watching Disney’s “Austin & Ally”, the story of seemingly ordinary teens who rise not only to glittery stardom, but also to wholesome lives of friends and fun. As I watch her watching, I see the dreams behind those eyes, the twinkly smile that lights her face as if it were aglow in spotlight.

The ephemeral promise of flashing cameras and screaming fans inspires her to sit at the small, white desk in the quiet corner of her bedroom, hunched over pages of colored paper, writing songs she will later sing to the adoring audience of her mirrored self, hairbrush-ophone tight in her hand. But she is also driven by the good ol’ fashioned belief that if you work hard enough at something you love, you will undoubtedly accomplish success, praise, awards, celebrity. You will be famous.

famous

It’s as simple and wholesome a belief as the freckles sprinkled faintly across her nose, and every time she imagines her future life out loud I feel warm and hopeful. Yes love, I want to say, it is as simple as that.

Of course, it’s not.

I wanted more than anything to be live on CNN. So I majored in drama and journalism, met a guy, married him, and moved halfway around the world to be a stay-at-home-mom with four kids. They’re the ones reporting live, from the minivan.

Maybe I didn’t work that hard. Maybe I didn’t want it as much as I thought I did. Maybe I got distracted, confused, overwhelmed.

Or maybe my dream changed.

Maybe once I met that guy, what I really wanted was to marry him, have kids and stay home to raise them.

In the humdrum of normal, everyday life in which success is defined by whether I get dinner on the table at a reasonable time (as in any time before bedtime) and by how often I mutter “Stop that” to the boy opening and closing the drawer with his foot, where my claim to fame is the chocolate mousse I make on special holidays, and the only journalism I’ve done in recent-ish years is edit the school newsletter, it’s easy to lose myself in the dreams that didn’t come true. It only takes a small question – What did you want to be when you were at college, Mom? – to stir up immense wistfulness about the great big plans I had for myself. But then, you know, life.

I’m not famous in the world out there. I’m not chasing leads or breaking news or reporting live from anywhere. But here at home? Definite star power. I’m famous for surprise tickles before bedtime, for homemade meat pies, for practical solutions to complicated problems. Their faces (mostly) light up like thousands of camera flashes when I walk in the room. Recognition, adoration, attention.

I look at her intent face, at her little self dressed much like me in black leggings, a tank top and slouchy sweater, and even as I answer that 20 years ago I wanted to be something I’m not, I realize I am exactly what I wanted to be. I wanted to be this.

#ItsTheLittleThings

Posted on October 23, 2014 by Nicki

Orange October has brought way more than the awesome San Francisco Giants to the World Series. A tiny life lost in a terrorist attack in Jerusalem, a brave army reservist senselessly gunned down in Ottawa, nationwide Ebola panic, a beloved friend quietly battles a ventilator, and another awaits a worrisome surgery. Is surgery ever not worrisome? Strep throat, Halloween mania, lost teeth (finally!), a very skinny dachshund, and nothing screams frightening 40s like smooshed boobs at the first ever mammogram.

In full spin on a very wobbly axis, I whiz through this agitated orbit. It takes a lot of output, seemingly limitless energy to keep that axis spinning. Even though it’s wobbly and erratic. Not only to make sure it doesn’t all fall apart on its unpredictable, hurtling journey through time but also to keep the love, the happy, the optimistic going, and going strong.

But of course everything, everybody reaches a limit eventually.

The very old, skinny dachshund is definitely not my favorite right now. For all his supposed inability to see, hear, run and jump nothing stops him from brazenly climbing onto the dining room table to gobble the last of the chicken, from gingerly pulling himself into the dishwasher to sneak a last lick of the stew, and if I said he peed in my bed the other night that would be TMI.

But after all is said, done and cleaned up he snuggles his warm small body right up next to mine, like he did in the days when Pretzel made three… and I smile. Breathe deep. Feel the crazy spinning axis slow some. “It’s the little things,” I think.

It’s the rare morning coffee date with my always-traveling husband. He is mostly somewhere, and hardly ever here. But a travel schedule includes flights that leave at off-hours, so I get a bittersweet hot chocolate and an hour of Just Him before the 11.35am to Arkansas.

source: foodspotting.com

It’s the news that my niece has an imaginary friend. G-d bless the child, she is too clever, too busy and too chatty for her three-year-old self so she invented a friend for the overflow! Wonderfully creative and imaginative, inspired and whimsical. And simple. To create what she wants, how and when she wants it, using only the power of her 38-month-old imagination.

This beautiful photo, taken by my mom, of the jacaranda trees in my hometown squeezes my heart and lifts my cheeks with a smile. Pretoria is famous for these blossoms that tint the air lilac and carpet the wide roads with messy purple every October. This scene makes me homesick, but in a good way. In the way that feels warm and comforting, even though I am far away.

photo by Dianne Faktor

These hilarious-to-me texts from my friend Stephanie, who thinks I am the “challah Jedi master” (her words). Her confidence puzzles me, since the one time we did make challah together my dough was too sticky, the braids were misshapen, and the end result was edible but definitely not delicious. Be that as it may, my weekly attempts at rise-to-perfection inspire her inner Princess Leia to text me these hashtags. Even the rising dough laughs: #ChallahJediMaster #MayTheYeastBeWithYou (my favorite) #QueenAmichallah #HansSchlomo. Her hashtagging rules the Empire. Yep, #itsthelittlethings.

Hengry. This is what my little guy calls his friend Henry. Somehow, his five-year-old tongue gets stuck at the back of his throat when he says Henry, and this delicious modification provokes a giggle every time. Luckily, Hengry isn’t bothered by the creative slip.

The surprise purple cauliflower in my salad (purple again – love it!), the 4am blood moon moment with my son as we caught the lunar eclipse together, the garden-fresh rosemary I pick for the lamb chops, this amazing song from Hozier (the way he says Honey makes everything better):

All give me pause, and clear a space in the chaos, a tiny space big enough to find a few ounces of me in the heaviness of everything else. These little things, these small moments remind me to turn in instead of out, to breathe, to find the calm and the happy. To replenish before I reach my limit.

After his cataract surgery last week, my father the optometrist marveled at his suddenly clear vision: “I can’t believe how much brighter the colors are!” The little things between the not so little. Bright orange October.