Dear Mr. A$$hole

Posted on June 29, 2014 by Nicki

When I got dressed this morning I was looking forward to a day of special people. A day of smiles, and some tears. A day of children, friends, hellos and goodbyes.

I did not think of you at all.

When I got dressed in my black skirt and white top under a turquoise jacket the fog was still thick and the air was chilly. But it would burn off. I could feel it. The sun was going to shine from a bay blue sky and the promise of a brightly beautiful day swirled in the still-cool mist.

I did not think of you at all.

Black, white, turquoise. I love the combination of those colors together. Good bar mitzvah colors I mused. Don’t forget to use that new eye concealer. Purple mascara. Where’s that lipstick I just bought? Are the kids ready? I hope I haven’t lost it. Put on your shoes and brush your teeth and get your brother. Oh, here’s the lipstick.

I did not think of you at all.

We have known each other for years, but we are not friends. You are not one of the special people I was hoping to connect with today. We greet each other, wave in recognition as our cars pass, but you know very little about me, and I know even less about you. I do not think of you at all. Ever.

And even though we are not friends – or perhaps it’s because we are not friends – you have something to say about my appearance every time you see me. But not directly to me. To whoever is standing with you at the time – my husband, a mutual friend, even someone I’ve never met.

Something inappropriate. Irrelevant and dangerously close to offensive. Something that elicits uncomfortable laughter. Or a deliberate turn in the conversation.

He thinks he’s being funny, we all think. Even me. Benefit of the doubt. He’s trying to be complimentary. To engage. No harm done. And the conversation continues as before, swirls around me like that gentle mist, cools my flushed red cheeks, slows my suddenly racing heart, squelches the little flare of anger before it bursts into red-hot flames of fury.

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel,” said that goddess of words, Maya Angelou.

No harm done. Until today.

It wasn’t that you said anything any more inappropriate than all those other times. It wasn’t that the setting was changed, or the conversation was different. It wasn’t that the friend between us was someone I hadn’t seen in a while.

It was that I’d had enough.

We are not friends. I do not think of you at all.

And now I am thinking of you.

When I got dressed this morning, it was for me. Just like it is every morning, and for all people everywhere. And unless I invite your opinion – either with actual words, or by the nature of our relationship or circumstance – you may not, not ever, comment on the way I look. Whether in jest or in earnest, to insult or to compliment, to bond with the men you happen to be standing with or for no reason at all, just keep that damn irrelevant opinion of yours to yourself, preferably for always but at least until I am not around to hear it.

Because it’s not dangerously close to offensive – it is offensive. And insulting. Completely inappropriate. Degrading. Dehumanizing. Objectifying. And when I hear it, I feel angry, indignant, insulted, appalled, embarrassed… and then worthless. And how dare you – you who I do not think of at all – have the power to make me feel that way?

source: http://www.eag.rcs.k12.tn.us

I will forget what you said. Maybe not tomorrow. Or even next week. But over time. I will forget exactly what you said. How you said it. I will forget that I was so angry I almost poured hot coffee on your arm. That you actually backed away from me as sharp silver darts flashed from my eyes. I will forget the details.

But I will never forget how you have made me feel, every time those filthy words spilled from the trashcan of your mouth. Humiliated. Worthless. May your own beautiful daughters never feel that way.

And I will never forget how I felt today, after years of politely turning away from your smelly, offensive, recycled garbage: not just angry – FURIOUS! Not embarrassed – OUTRAGED. And definitely not humiliated. You are worthless.

I. Do. Not. Think. Of. You. At. All.

May Her Memory Be a Blessing

Posted on June 27, 2014 by Nicki

Death can be a funny thing.

I don’t mean funny ha-ha. I mean funny strange. Peculiar. Complicated. Sad. Or not. Relief. Indifference.

When we lose someone significant from our lives the rainbow of feelings may span a sky as vast as a lifetime – dark and stormy, light and airy, angry red, bluest blues, nostalgia, memories, regret, peace. Everything at once or nothing at all.

All four of my grandparents passed away when I was old enough to remember them, and their passing. I was eight, then 13, 25, 36. I had a special relationship with each, but was closest to my Granny Mary who died six weeks after my youngest was born. Granny was a real baby whisperer – adored infants, loved to hold them, to feed them, change them, burp them, to rock and sing to them for hours – but she never got to whisper to my littlest guy. He has no tangible memories of her and no photographs with her to trigger any.

Losing all those grandparents was devastating. Some were expected – one grandfather had Parkinson’s and was 81 when he died, both grandmothers were clearly near the end of their lives – but my gruff Grampa Sonny was younger than my parents are now, and his heart attack was as sudden and swift as his legendary temper. He was quick to anger and loud to yell, but that weakened heart of his was as gentle and fuzzy as a puppy’s underbelly.

It’s hard, losing loved ones, no matter the relationship, the circumstances, the distance both geographic and emotional. Grandparents’ passing is sad, but usually expected given their age and their life experience in relation to our own. Sometimes more complicated to deal with is the loss of parents, children, friends, people we haven’t seen in a long time. And often, in that difficulty, are surprising feelings, unexpected reactions, blindsiding memories that bring tears and laughter.

I last saw her about 12 years ago. She hadn’t worked for my family for years, but my mother still kept in contact with her, checked on her wellbeing, knew her whereabouts. She had diabetes and her failing health was evident over the many years she was part of our family, but she was always laughing, always happy to help us kids find what we had misplaced right in front of our noses, always roasted a chicken for lunch every Saturday.

We each had our own relationship with her – she and my brother would joke and tease each other, and even before my boyfriend became my fiancé became my husband he joined in their fun, easy banter. She told my sister and I about her happinesses and disappointments, the pride and difficulties she felt with her children, her parents, the gossip and drama with her friends. My parents took care of her, and she took care of all of us.

She was at my brother’s bar mitzvah, saw the three of us graduate high school and college, knew all our friends and their parents, and all my parents’ friends. She knew how both grandmothers took their tea and that my aunt always had black coffee after a meal. She prepared the candles to light every Friday night, and kept the kitchen more kosher than any of us. She joyously danced with Ryan and me at our wedding, and I couldn’t wait to introduce her to my own not-yet-one-year-old twelve years ago.

Pretoria, 2002 – My sister, Sina, me and baby Daniel… and Granny Mary in the background

That was the last time I saw her. Life happens, and we lost touch.

But all my children know all about her. And Ryan and I often share a “Sina memory.” My sister and I talk about her now and again, and smile thinking about things she said and the way she said them.

And in this strange, very connected world we live in, an email found its way to my father this week, with the news that she passed away a month ago. Her funeral was on my late grandmother’s birthday, which feels significant and I don’t know why.

More emails followed between my mother and her daughter, the last 12 years of her life filled in like a picture quickly and brightly drawn on a blank poster board: a grandmother of five grandchildren, great-grandmother to two. What was clear from that drawing was that she loved us as much as we loved her.

An emotional rainbow of sadness, regret, tenderness, laughter and memories.

“Zichrona levracha – may her memory be a blessing,” we say in the Jewish religion, when talking or writing about someone who has passed.

Sina z”l: truly a blessing.

I Am at Home Anywhere in the World When Reading or Writing

Posted on June 22, 2014 by Nicki

ONCE upon a time, 20-something and newlywed, I made my way north and west to begin a life atop a hill swirled in pale gray fog and clanging cable-car bells. Far, far from the early morning hadedas and hot African sun of my home, my future sparkled before me bright as the white sails that dotted the Bay, expansive as the red bridge I crossed to go to work. As strange as those hilly streets and twangy accents were to me, I was cheerily confident this too would become home.

But I was a South African in San Francisco – possibly the furthest in the world I could be from the place where I’d lived most of my life, where I had befriended Anne of Green Gables, and met Moon-Face, Silky the Fairy and Saucepan Man in The Magic Faraway Tree. Where I had fallen in love with Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester, and where I took a book with me to almost every family gathering, because I am the eldest cousin and the worlds created by Judy Blume and Mary Higgins Clark were far more exciting to me than playing hide-and-go-seek in the garden.

I was far away from that place and from the parents who taught me to read, from the friends who shared their books with me, and from the aunts who passed on their favourite titles, but I clung to my literary worlds. Armistead Maupin brought the beautiful city I now called home, to life. His delicious descriptions of characters and encounters in his famous Tales of the City series were more colourful on the black and white page than they were in my real life. Those books made San Francisco home to me in a way my job and apartment and going to the gym and buying groceries didn’t.

I wanted to write like that. I wanted to create worlds that eldest cousins could escape to, write words that were cozy and comforting and settled over my own babies like their warmest, fuzziest blanket. I wanted to share my thoughts and ideas and seedlings of creativity on the page.

My adopted, faraway home has indeed become home. I am raising four loud and wonderful children who clamor over each other like wriggly puppies to be the first to read the Sunday comics. I fight against the restlessness of being a stay-at-home-mom and delight in the endless moments of kids and dog and chaos. And I continue to read, and now I write.

I watch my son trip over the dachshund because his nose is buried in his latest sci-fi journey.The words are everywhere. I write them and read them, borrow them from libraries, and share them with my children at bedtime.

The words, read and written, transform my space: my special spot on my grandmother’s couch in Pretoria, my tiny res room at Rhodes or my son’s bedroom in San Francisco, the bench I sit on outside the school library or the parking lot outside the ballet studio. All of time and space, imagined or real, are contained in those words, and no matter where or when in the world I am, when I am reading – or writing – I am home.

NickiGDD

This post originally appeared in South Africa’s The Daily Dispatch and The Herald as part of the Nal’ibali literacy campaign. Nal’ibali – it starts with a story. #Just15Minutes

Happy Sweet Sixteen to Us!

Posted on June 9, 2014 by Nicki

source: footage.shutterstock.com

Sixteen years ago today, June 9, I arrived in San Francisco with little more than a suitcase, a new husband, and the kind of anticipation that makes one shiver from excitement and pure nerves… although the shivering may have been because of the chilly fog swirling rapidly over the Golden Gate and up and down the hilly streets. I was possibly the furthest I could be in the world from my home of Pretoria, South Africa.

I would come to learn that the fog is the Bay Area’s “own natural air conditioner” and even though it means I never go anywhere without a fleece or a hoodie in summer, not even to the beach on a rare 90-degree day, it’s what makes San Francisco the magical place it is, together with the clanging cable cars, the crookedest street in the world, earthquakes, bridges, and iconic Transamerica building. Welcome to San Francisco!

During my 16-year transformation from shivering, bewildered South African to proud American, I have discovered these invaluable Sixteen Truths You Must Accept to Survive Life in the United States (besides emphasizing the “r” at the end of words like “chair, here, four” in order to be understood):

It’s easy to make friends if you have an accent – not a week goes by that someone doesn’t tell me they could listen to me talk all day, and they really mean it. If my husband is around, he assures them they actually couldn’t.
Unless Americans know a South African or have been to South Africa, unless they have actually heard a South African talk, they have no idea what accent this is. I am most definitely from England, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand – but very rarely from South Africa.
Sushi, tacos and dim sum are as American as any kind of pie (except you will be hard-pressed to find a steak pie, curried lamb pie or Cornish pasty pretty much anywhere in the US).
A boot is a trunk, a nappy is a diaper, a plaster is a Band Aid, football is soccer, and a lift is an elevator – but also in the US you do not hire a car, only people are for hire. Everything else is rented. In South Africa the only thing you rent is a property – from a letting agent not a rental agent. I know. I’m still confused.
You can ship anything, anywhere in the continental United States – even raw meat. And live frogs.
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,” reads an inscription at the General Post Office in New York City (source: Wikipedia). And the US postal system itself is extremely efficient. Our frog arrived within two days of ordering it. But a universal truth is that post offices themselves are inefficient no matter where in the world you are. This is strangely comforting.
Americans love ice. With everything.
Bananas, onions, pineapples and toilet paper rolls are four times the size in the US than in any other country in the world. I’m pretty sure this is a fact.
Woolworths (every ex-South African’s favorite store) is not the only place in the world to buy comfortable underwear and pajamas – it’s only taken me 16 years to figure that out. I’m not sure what to ask my mom and mom-in-law to bring me now. Oh yes, tea!
Halloween and 4^th of July really do happen exactly like on TV in the eighties. And there is no better way to celebrate anything than with a parade.
Disneyland is “The Happiest Place on Earth.”
Any establishment can be a drive-thru – even a bank.
You can return almost anything you don’t want anymore, any time, even if you’ve worn it or used it. I’m not admitting to have done this… okay, maybe once.
Roast turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce and pecan pie are delicious for everyone on Thanksgiving – even if you’re not a born American. Our goal over the next 16 years is to deep-fry the turkey like they do in Arkansas.
When someone asks where you went to school, they are not expecting you to say Carmel Primary. Elementary school is not school! They want to know where you went to college, university, and did you do a post-grad. My answer to this question used to be fairly long, even though I did not do a post-grad: I went to Rhodes University (blank stare), in Grahamstown (polite smile), in the Eastern Cape (maybe some recognition), in South Africa (oooh, so that’s where you’re from. I thought you were Irish). Now when I’m asked where I went to school, I say, “South Africa.” Kills at least three questions at once.
Until my sister moved to San Francisco, we had no family around – which was okay in our daily lives, but made Shabbat dinners, weekends, holidays kinda lonely for a while. My very first San Francisco friend taught me that “Friends are the family you make for yourself,” and I am grateful for this every day of the last 16 years.

Thank you to this great country for welcoming me with those open, misty arms so many years ago (almost half my life), for giving us a safe, beautiful place to raise our four Jewish American children, for lighting our lives with 4^th of July fireworks and for offering all six of us daily opportunity to be the selves we want to be.

Happy Sweet Sixteen to Us!

Tea for Two and Two for Tea

Posted on June 3, 2014 by Nicki

There is no better place in the world to enjoy a cup of real English tea than in England.

The thing about tea is that when it’s good, it’s very very good – heavenly actually – and when it’s bad, it’s horrid. And we don’t get very good tea in America. We get Lipton. And Lipton is horrid.

I’m not talking about herbal tea. The U.S. has fabulous herbal teas, many even locally produced like Oakland’s very own Numi Tea, and I love me a cup of organic mint or chamomile tea after a meal as much as the next guy.

But that’s not the tea I adore. My tea is real English breakfast tea, milk two sugars (although now I’m trying to eliminate sugar because I live in California where everyone is eliminating something from her diet and I had FOMO). So real English breakfast tea for me, with milk. And by real I mean not a U.S. brand. This is the Starbucks nation after all. I mean a brand from England. Or anywhere in the U.K. Or South Africa. Australia. I guess a brand from anywhere they play cricket. Because tea and cricket go together like Laverne and Shirley, Danny and Sandy, E.T. and Elliott (all of whom are American and would probably never drink tea, but rather double espressos. Sandy is Australian though – she definitely drinks tea).

Tea makes my day. It starts my day. Often ends my day. Calms the chaos (all that caffeine) and enhances the calm (more caffeine). It has moved me through moments of terrible sadness and despair, and held me happier in the happy. Weekend afternoons are always about tea, whether rain or shine, soccer or swimming (no cricket in my very American family) because that’s how our parents do it in South Africa, and that’s how their parents did it too. One of my favorite memories is slurping tea from my grandmother’s saucer, like a cat.

source: http://www.chamdol.co.uk

And last week I did get to enjoy tea in England. And it was delicious. It wasn’t even a special brand – just regular PG Tips, but the English kind. And it tasted so much better. I didn’t pay attention to it while I was drinking copious cuppas in England. Rather, I noticed it when I came home. Because when I made a cup of tea on Saturday morning – real English tea – in my own kitchen, it tasted different.

And it could’ve been because it was rainy and damp in London all week, or because the water tastes different over there (the big story last week was that traces of cocaine have been found in Britain’s drinking water), or that I was using brown sugar instead of white sugar (or no sugar).

It could have been because of all those, or none of those or some of those. But it was definitely because of who I was drinking those cups of tea with in London.

A friend so dear and special. A friend who has known me 35 of my 40 years. Who wanted to clear the slate on a little dispute we had in high school. Who loves “Mad Men” as much as I do and for all the same reasons, Don Draper being only one of them. Who remembers things I have forgotten and who can’t believe the things I have remembered. Who took me to see the fantastical cut-outs of Henri Matisse and then schlepped the banks of the Thames with me in search of tea and scones. We came up empty-handed – can you imagine? No traditional tea and scones on the south banks of the Thames?!

We made tea for each other every single day, many times a day, during my week-long stay in London. We sat together at the beautifully distressed wooden table in her kitchen, while her slightly unruly English garden steps away on the other side of the glass door soaked up the gentle rain. She thought I made the best cup of tea, and I thought she did.

Because a lot of love and decades of friendship, book reviews, gossip and chitchat, fashion do’s and don’ts and movie synopses, big decisions, hard conversations, silly stories, and so many tears and hysterical laughter and comfortable silences were poured into every cup of tea, made each one stronger, taste better, last longer.

I missed her on Saturday morning when I drank my suddenly strange-tasting tea without her. And it may well be there is no better place than England to drink real English tea – or it may just be that I miss my forever friend.

Because the thing about finally being together after a long time apart, about spending wonderful time with that special someone I haven’t seen for a while, is that I miss them more than ever after.

And the tea tastes a little less satisfying… but only until next time.