Too Hot Not To Handle

Posted on September 10, 2015 by Nicki

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The air is still. So still I can barely hear the crickets chirp. The window is open wide to the sultry night and somewhere far down the street a dog barks. It must be midnight. Every now and then, the faintest, coolest breeze kisses my skin. The leaves sigh.

Softly he rests his hand on my arm.

“Don’t. Touch. Me.” My lips scarcely move. The words are a flat monotone in the dark.

His amused chuckle fills the heated space between us, and he rolls over.

It’s too hot. Too hot to touch. To be touched. Too hot to think, to exhale, to remember if I turned the dishwasher on. Even the whisper-soft breeze has stopped. It’s too hot to sleep and I feverishly wonder what tomorrow will bring. If it ever comes.

***

The sun scorches the trail we’re walking on, and a spotted lizard darts under a bush next to me. Its branches are crackly and brittle, and the dry leaves curl themselves like miniature cups, waiting for water. I take just a sip. It’s warm.

“I want to find the French Trail,” I murmur. I know that is the trail that is shaded and cool. It’s the trail where the trees are the tallest. They stretch and bend their skinny redwood trunks up up up toward the sun and they filter the light in leafy, holy patterns. G-d’s light.

But I am not usually able to find it. I take a wrong turn, start on the wrong path, or run out of time.

“Okay, so let’s find it,” he says next to me. He holds out his hand as we start to make our way down through the trees, out of the dusty, beating sun and over the thick roots and fallen logs. Something scuttles but otherwise all is quiet. The sky stretches white-blue above us and the sweat makes a slow trickle down my neck. I grab his hand. Too hot.

We walk carefully in silence for a while. The roots coil over each other in deceptive lines, and I worry he is going to twist his ankle. He asks if I’m okay.

“Here it is!” I can’t believe it. French Trail with an arrow that way.

I hadn’t wanted to go on a hike that morning. The heat is intolerable, insufferable and the sun bites my skin with iron-hot teeth every time I go outside. I am moody and cranky and only looking for ways to escape, not walk towards, any kind of inferno. Out there or inside.

And there is a grocery list at the bottom of my purse, and two essays waiting to be continued, and it’s an early dismissal day so even less hours to get this sweaty mess together. Who hikes when it’s 95 degrees out… at 9am?

But it is a rare morning of togetherness. A time that caught us both by surprise, when we could shift schedules and be flexible and walk and talk and breathe in nature and in light.

The light floats through the trees and we walk, close but not touching. This is where I want to be, I think, in this cool, shaded silence that smells green and full of hope. Hope that the drought will break, that the heat will ease, that this peace and calm will stay with us today and tomorrow and tomorrow.

And suddenly we are back in the sun, working our way upward to where we started. Because what goes down must always come back up, and it’s hard. The flies buzz around my ears and the dust is in my nose and I stop to gasp mouthfuls of hot, stagnant air every few feet. Slow-going.

“You are so noisy,” I mutter as he tries his own system of inhale exhale. My disapproval is as thick as the air.

“Just trying to survive,” he puffs as he strides past me. I knew he would say that. When I come around the next bend he is waiting for me. We are steps away from the car.

“It was so great until the last part.” I stop right there in the broiling sun. He nods in agreement. And even as the words are out my mouth I know that’s not true. It was great, even the last part. It is great. And it’s not over.

It’s time to say goodbye. To get on with our days, as usual. To try and stay cool, and remember that in the parched dust of our discomfort and in the breathtaking dappled light of love and ease, we are together.

“This was a good suggestion,” I say.

“I’m glad you were available,” he replies.

This is a Finish the Sentence Friday post, where writers and bloggers gather together to share their versions of a completed sentence. This week’s prompt was, “Each Fall, I…” Hosted by Kristi of Finding Ninee, and co-hosted by Julie from Carvings on a Desk, and Danielle from Way Off Script. This is the Fall that does not yet feel like Fall, but every year around this time I notice a shift somewhere nearby.

Reflections on Fall and Rosh Hashana

Posted on September 30, 2014 by Nicki

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. For me. Possibly my favorite time. Sweet wishes and loud kisses. Crisp sweet apples, sticky honey and rosy pomegranates full of hope and promise.

I grew up in a place where the sweet anticipation of the Jewish new year – Rosh Hashana – made sense in nature. September is spring in the southern hemisphere, where the earlier-rising sun, fragrant jasmine, fresh-cut grass and tentatively tweeting birds color the day’s gentle breezes with renewal, rebirth and hope.

We dipped round apples into amber honey, prayed and wished for a sweet year, tasted the first bright yellow peaches, and the soft smells and colors and sounds of spring were warm and obvious reminders of life and creation. Rosh Hashana (literally translated as Head of the Year): the birthday of the world.

But here above the equator, the days are imperceptibly shorter. The birds have flown, the grass is too long and the light is low. Vibrant pink and green give way to gentle gold and brown. It’s fall.

Summer is fading, winter is coming… and still, it’s my most favorite time of the year. The promise of creation is everywhere. It’s Rosh Hashana.

The moon, the first of this new Jewish year, is a thinly curved sliver hanging low in an inky sky. Breathtakingly simple. Quiet and bright. Trees are fiercely ablaze in orange, deep red and yellow. There’s been little to no rain all year, no drop in California’s sunny temperature for hundreds of days, but the green leaves still yield to the changing light, the traveling sun and, as the earth turns, those beautiful fiery branches ignite hope.

My love of the fall has surprised and delighted me. I am a sun-loving girl raised way down south, where my favorite time of year was always Rosh Hashana in the scented, hopeful spring.

But, as summer slowly fades into fall here, I feel compelled to reflect on a year both euphoric and difficult, a year of war and of celebration, a year of illness and loss and also one of life and encouragement. I feel inspired now, when I am eating orange persimmons instead of peaches, to celebrate creation even as nature is preparing to hibernate, to wish for a sweet new year of bright light and promise as the night falls earlier and quicker.

It’s the birthday of the world. And birthdays are for celebrating. For wishing. For hoping. For reflecting, and re-evaluating. Spring in the south and fall up north, birthdays carry the promise of life. Possibly of love and smiles and thoughtfully good intention.

My favorite time of year. Time for pumpkins and pomegranates and apples dipped in honey.

And also, fall is definitely time for red boots.

This post was inspired by my friend Michelle T’s beautiful insight on Creation. Thank you Michelle for your wisdom (and for encouraging me to think and not just eat my way through the holiday!).

This is 40?

Posted on March 11, 2014 by Nicki

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.