First Five Days, Top Five Moments

Posted on July 7, 2014 by Nicki

Our arrival in Israel five days ago was underwhelming. And I was disappointed. My kids were tired, hungry, irritable. I was emotional.

In less than two days we had departed the foggy coast of the Pacific, crossed the Atlantic, flown over the Baltic and Black Seas, and landed on the too-sunny shores of the glittering Mediterranean. We had been awake since 3am Swedish time, which feels like bright midday all the way there up north where the sun barely sets, and were too many confused time zones away to figure out if it was dinner or breakfast or just a glass of apple juice we wanted. Or all of those. Or really just the bathroom.

But we had landed in Israel! Rally children, rally! Be excited! The place your mother calls home. Where she longs to live with you and your dad and Pretzel the dachshund, to speak Hebrew, and eat spongy pita with real hummus and those vanilla “Dani” puddings that only taste good here. Where the scent of the orange blossoms in the hot, middle-eastern air envelopes me in a nostalgic hug of sunny memories, and even the impatient bus driver who almost ran you all over with his hands in the air and not on the wheel makes me smile fondly.

But their initial response to the homeland of my dreams was muted.

It was hot. They were tired.

I wiped the tears of too-much-to-explain from my beaming cheeks, quietly listened to the song in my heart, and gently herded them through the bustle of Ben Gurion airport – only to be faced with an unmoving wall of humanity at passport control. Apparently every flight from Europe lands in Tel Aviv at the same time. Balagan. Chaos.

My wily, street-smart second boy deduced the only way to get us through this mass was to start a line of his own. And so began a series of unforgettable, and definitely unmuted, moments… and it’s only day five:

“Who needs Google translate when we have Mom,” remarked same, streetwise son as I negotiated our way through the parking lot on our jetlagged, 11.30pm supermarket run that first day. My children had never heard me speak Hebrew, complete with pseudo-Israeli accent, and I think they were (mildly) impressed. That moment is up there with the time they discovered I could water-ski.
My five-year-old handful of a boy, who announces every time his beach-loving family is within half a mile of an ocean that he hates the beach, cannot get enough of the Mediterranean waters and languishes in the sand on its shores. Maybe because it’s warm. Or maybe because it’s not an ocean, it’s a sea. Or maybe because it’s Israel.
“Did you say thank you?” I nag at my shy daughter, as the waitress places her drink in front of her. There is no excuse for bad manners in my book. I don’t care how shy or tongue-tied they are – please and thank you always, no matter what. She looks straight at me, such sincerity in her big, green-gray eyes. “I did Mom, I said todah.” Oh. Not just “thank you.” Thank you in Hebrew. That shut me up fast.
More Hebrew from my oldest who has started calling me Ima (Mom), greets us with a cheery boker tov (good morning), and orders mitz anavim (grape juice) for himself and his brother. My kids go to a public school in the U.S. and do not learn Hebrew on a daily basis like my husband and I did growing up, so to hear them use this important language of their heritage makes my heart sing with pride, joy and relief. They get it.
Israelis are friendly – they want to know where we’re from, why we’re here, what we are doing. And when we tell them we’re celebrating the big one’s bar mitzvah, their delight is palpable. Whether on the beach, at the Western Wall or the spice stand in the market, they are full of good wishes for the bar mitzvah boy. Mazal Tov they yell, high-five him and shake his hand. It’s awesome. He is glowing. And growing – I think he is now taller than his mom, just in time for his bar mitzvah.

Our arrival may have been muted and underwhelming. But it didn’t take long before we were living each day in this hot, energetic, frustrating, wonderful place in full color, complete with noisy language and hand gestures. And it’s only day five.

There is family to meet (“You have too many cousins, Mom,” they grumble good-naturedly as they try to keep the branches of the family tree stick-straight in their minds), history to learn, and their entire religious and cultural heritage behind and before them.

For 13 years I have dreamed of showing my kids this place that I call home.

They each tear a page out of my notebook, and write notes of prayer and wish to place in the cracks between the gigantically smooth stones of the Kotel (Western Wall) in Jerusalem.

I watch my daughter and sons look up at those enormous stones. I wonder what they are praying for, what they are dreaming.

I am overwhelmed. And it’s only day five.

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.

You Rock-Apulco Red!

Posted on April 29, 2014 by Nicki

His head bops in time to the music. His fingers tap out the rhythm on his knee, and his mouth moves as he sings the song in his head, while a little smile plays around his lips and lights up his deep, dark eyes. As long as it’s a song he likes, he’s happy. This morning it was Green Day’s “21 Guns.”

I look over at him, and feel a smile tug at my own lips. “He rocks,” I think. Kinda corny, he is literally rocking out with Billy Jo there in the front seat, but the awesome heavy drumbeat inspires my thought, as does his ten-year-old body moving in time to it.

21 Guns – Green Day source: fanpop.com

It’s not often that I have such positively-inspired thoughts about my children, any of them. I’ve written much about my struggle to feel fulfilled as a stay-at-home-mom, about my loathing for my minivan, that dastardly Chariot of Carpool, about how needy and hungry and whiny they are much of the time. And all of that is true.

But on occasion, they do rock.

Like my daughter who made up a song while in the shower last night. I heard her off-key singing and verses that made no sense and just smiled and shook my head. When I walked by the bathroom she was staring straight into the mirror, belting it out.

“Oh Mom, I made up this song with a few words, but then these other sentences just came to me, so when I perform it, I’m going to sing the whole thing.” I don’t know where she plans on performing it, and for whom, but she believes she’s going places and so do I. She rocks.

Or the biggest brother who has a nickname for each of his siblings, something quirky and esoteric that only he calls them, that makes them feel very special and very loved by him, makes them smile when he calls them and melt in contentment like a puppy having its belly scratched. He rocks.

And my tiny boy, five for just three weeks, who had a sleepover last night. Not just anywhere, but over the bay and across the bridge, all the way in San Francisco. That’s pretty far when you’re five. But not for him. He loves his little friend, and wanted to spend time with him, and this was the only way he could do it yesterday. So he packed his own bag, and put in three stuffies, and memorized my cell phone number, and gave me a quick kiss goodbye. And had the best time. You got it – rocks.

“Do you like this song, Mom?” my rhythmic rocker asks as “21 Guns” fades into the new one from Eminem and Nate Ruess, the one about their moms. “I do,” I say. “Me too,” he replies, and effortlessly raps the Eminem part. Happy if he likes the song, and happy if I like it too.

I often tell them how impossible they’re being, or wonder out loud why they can’t stop fighting. Nag them to stop eating candy, turn off the TV, clean up your room, don’t say shut up.

But today, you guys, I just want to say: You rock.

You Rock-Apulco Red! by OPI

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

eXcuse Moi

Posted on April 28, 2014 by Nicki

Please excuse me. Here’s where I take enormous artistic license. Today is X in the A to Z Writing Challenge I’m participating in. Already a difficult letter to write on: according to OxfordDictionaries.com there are only 120 words in current English that start with the letter X. And there are no OPI nail polish colors named with an X-word. None. And the very creatively named OPI colors have been my inspiration for every piece I’ve written in this challenge, since A for Are We There Yet on April 1.

So now what? I’ve been dreading today. I’ve anxiously referred to it a couple times in previous posts – the lack of a color X. Stressed about it enough that my sister researched OPI X names (she didn’t come up with anything, but did offer creative suggestions). Even tried to palm today’s post off onto another writer. So not cool.

No X-named nail polish means no inspiration. Which means no writing. Means a day skipped. Means incomplete challenge. Means No. Fucking. Way.

So, merci Artistic License, described by Wikipedia as a “colloquial term used to denote the alteration of the conventions of grammar or language…” To complete this challenge and feel like a [lame, geeky] rockstar for doing so, I am going with the phonetic spelling of X – e x – as an acceptable substitute for X. Excuse moi s’il vous plait.

source: tripadvisor.co.uk

My French is very limited. The few words I’ve written so far are nearing the grand total of my vocabulary à la Francaise (does that even make sense?). Which is a shame because I love Paris and French things, and I adore listening to spoken French. I did take one year of preliminary French at university. I learned enough to haltingly decode the written version, and to say, “C’est tous? Oui. Voilà!” with a flourish in both my hands and my voice. (Meaning: “That’s all? Yes. There you go!” A common exchange to elegantly close a transaction in French stores).

When my father’s parents arrived in South Africa from Lithuania, some time in the 1930s, they knew no English. Only Yiddish. Spoken mainly by the Jews of Eastern Europe, Yiddish is a uniquely expressive hybrid of Hebrew and German, and many of its wonderful words have become part of everyday language in some communities – words like oy vey, chutzpah, mensch and schlep.

My grandparents eventually learned heavily-accented English, but to each other they still spoke only Yiddish. A marvel of the young human brain is its ability to absorb other languages, especially with regular exposure, and my father and his brothers quickly learned Yiddish too. All my memories of the interactions between my father and his mother are in that exotic, elusive language.

poem by Yiddish poet Edith Kaplan Bregman source: yiddishbookcenter.org

No doubt my grandparents took pride in their sons’ proficiency at their mother tongue, while they raised them in a land so geographically, linguistically and emotionally far away from their own. But perhaps at times they wished they had a way to communicate with each other privately, a way to discuss grown-up matters beyond their boys’ comprehension.

I imagine they felt this way, because I do.

My dismal French aside, Hebrew and Afrikaans are the two additional languages I can understand, read, write and speak with fluency. Neither are particularly useful in my daily life in California, but I have secret multi-lingual aspirations and love knowing other languages.

My children are learning Hebrew, and already understand a fair amount. They are learning it because they will all be having a bar or bat mitzvah and need to know how to read and write the language of our religion, and also because my husband and I have strong cultural and emotional ties to the land of Israel and want our children to be able to speak and understand the language of the country. If not fluently, at least the American/South African/Anglo version: crappy grammar, mixed-up tenses, and big pride at being understood in an ancient language rich in history and culture and spirituality. And fun slang.

But the language I keep secret from my children is Afrikaans. I will never teach it to them.

source: washingtonpost.com

Not like the South African foods I’ve fed them since they were babies: boerewors and biltong and jelly babies and rooibos tea. Not like the songs I’ve taught them over the years: Shosholoza and Ag Pleez Deddy. Not like the Springbok rugby jerseys I dress them in, or the very South African way they say “ja ma” (yes mom) when I call them, just like I answer my own mother.

I love to impart these small, significant, South African pieces of me to them and watch how they absorb and own them, because I too am raising my children in a land very far away from the one I was born into. While the cultural, linguistic and emotional barriers in 21st century San Francisco are nothing compared to what my grandparents encountered in the 30s, I am South African. And my children are not.

But Afrikaans I keep for myself. And for my husband. And for anyone else who can understand and speak that language besides my children.

It’s essential for me to have a way to talk to Ryan in a language the kids don’t understand – comes in handy when planning birthday surprises, or discussing progress at school, or any other sensitive topic. But also because my children have too much access to me. They read my email over my shoulder until I shoo them away. When they sense a conversation is quiet, they cluster around, strain harder to hear each precious word. The car’s bluetooth broadcasts phone conversations loud and clear to the very back of the minivan.

We are not trying to hide it from them. But there are issues, problems, family and world affairs that are not necessary for them to hear. That they do not have the ability to process even if they do hear. And so I like to keep it private, when I can.

Afrikaans is not a language I grew up speaking. It’s not my language, the way English is. I learned it at school from first grade, heard it on TV, read it in magazines. I live in a town 10,500 miles away from where I learned Afrikaans: I don’t hear it anymore, I hardly ever speak it, and its fluency is slowly fading from my brain. More often a Hebrew word will surface when I’m looking for an Afrikaans one. But the longer I am away from South Africa, the tighter I hold on to it. My linguistic license.

Verskoon my kinders, this conversation is private. Excuse moi!

Excuse Moi by OPI

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

Wocka Wocka!

Posted on April 26, 2014 by Nicki

I don’t know what “Wocka Wocka” means. It’s what the muppets’ Fozzie Bear says after he cracks a joke – he considers himself something of a stand-up comic, so he cracks a lot of jokes. And then says, “Wocka wocka wocka!” I adore the muppets, but I feel more of a kinship with Miss Piggy than with Fozzie and his creative chortling.

But Wocka Wocka! starts with a W. And today is W in the A to Z Challenge (three more left, but who’s counting…). And today is our Wedding anniversary. And we were married at Wingate Park Country Club, in Pretoria, South Africa. So it seemed to be meaningful that today was a W day, despite the lack of meaning in Fozzie’s mirth.

Sixteen years married. The sun beat down so unseasonably fiercely on the golf course at Wingate that fall Sunday, our guests took cover under bright red umbrellas emblazoned with “Dunhill Tobacco Company Ltd.” Dunhill probably did not intend its umbrellas be used to shield the revelers from the South African midday sun at a small wedding, but thank goodness for that rosy shade! If not for them we might have had to share our chuppah (wedding canopy).

Pretoria April 26, 1998

Those first few anniversaries we celebrated with such earnest, so deliberately – cards and gifts to each other, phone calls and emails from around the world, a romantic dinner at a special restaurant. A day, this day, to celebrate each other, the moment he smashed the glass under the chuppah, the exuberant Mazal Tovs resounding in our ears for years.

As our union steadily and not-so-slowly expanded from two to six, the day itself waned in importance. We still exchanged cards – maybe a gift on the odd year, but his birthday is three weeks before and mine is two weeks after, so to add more wrapping paper to the pile seemed ridiculous and unnecessary. With one, two, three and then four kids around, there was less time and space to feel uniquely special and celebrated in our duo. “Happy anniversary,” at 6.47am, a meaningful but hastily scrawled funny card, a quick kiss. Probably dinner out, but not too late, and a rush to meet him in San Francisco, or pick him up from the train station in the rain, to make the reservation on time, stay interesting and interested and don’t yawn!

Sixteen years today. It’s a pretty long time. Driving age. We didn’t exchange cards. Neither of us has had the bandwidth to plan ahead. It wasn’t a mutual decision not to do cards – in fact, I realized it right now. I didn’t get him a card, and he didn’t get me one. I’m vaguely relieved we are equally oblivious – if he had given me a card with no reciprocity, I would’ve looked terribly inconsiderate and felt, quite frankly, like an asshole.

And we are going out this evening, but to celebrate our friend’s birthday, not our anniversary. Maybe our eyes will meet and we’ll quietly raise a glass to each other for a second. Or not.

Before either of us had the chance to utter “Happy anniversary” this morning, the kids were asking to watch TV, and what are we doing today, and can I go in the hot tub and and and. “It’s our anniversary,” Ryan said to more than one of them. “Oh,” he, he and she replied. The oldest was nowhere to be seen. “Can we watch TV?”

We looked at each other. I rolled over. Pulled the covers on top of my head. When I surfaced again the littlest two were stumbling into our bedroom with a tray: four slices of dry toast, and a bowl of strawberries they found in the fridge. And two freshly-picked flowers adorning their breakfast-in-bed bounty.

“Happy Anniversary!” they giggled.

It’s not really about the day we got married in 1998. That was a wonderful day. A wonderful day for a wedding and a wonderful wedding of love and celebration. And we love to remember that day and those red Dunhill umbrellas, and “Staying Alive” on the dance floor, and that crazy hora chair-thing they do at Jewish weddings, and Ryan’s cousin broke his foot, and my aunt usurped the microphone and serenaded us all at the end.

It’s more about everything that happens from one April 26 to the next.