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.

What the Gruesome Images from the Jerusalem Terror Attack Taught Me About Hope

Posted on November 19, 2014 by Nicki

bottom image source: The Jerusalem Post

The images are gruesome. Heartwrenching. So much blood. I don’t want to see. And for a while I don’t. Not really. I scroll quickly from one post to the next. Four killed in terror attack. Har Nof. Rabbis. Synagogue. Even as my heart is rushing and the tears are falling, my fingers slow down. To read. And to see. To really see.

A blood-soaked tallit (prayer shawl) crouches in crumpled horror. The red-splattered bookshelves stand feebly by. They are a quiet, ueseless protection to the forever stained siddurim (prayer books) they hold. Kehillat Bnei Torah Synagogue is a bloodbath.

“No. No. Nonononono,” I whisper, now unable to stop the onslaught of image after horrific image.

It’s the one of the bloodied tefillin-wrapped arm that stops me cold. His lifeless hand is curled around the ends of his tefillin, and his tallit is blemished with the hatred of others. Whose arm is it?

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!).

Eiffel For This Color

Posted on April 5, 2014 by Nicki

Me & the Eiffel Tower – Feb 2012

Expectation. Tricky… I think I confuse it with Hope. And they’re not the same at all. One is a strong belief that something is most likely to happen in the future. The other is the desire for something to happen or to be true. The difference is subtle… but definitely present. To think something is going to happen or happen in a certain way means I probably have sound reason to think it will. Expectation is generated in my brain. To want it to happen is a feeling, often lacking circumstance or reason. Hope comes from my heart.

When I was 22 years old, my boyfriend (now my husband) and I backpacked around Europe. I had graduated college the year before, he was still in Law School, and we’d never done anything quite like that together before. Our student days were spent apart – my campus was a 2-hour flight or 12-hour drive away from his – and the longest time we’d ever consecutively spent together was a week. Clearly this story does not end with broken hearts – we’ve been married 16 years this month, and it took us five years to do that. But while we saw snow together for the first time in Switzerland, walked the canaled streets of Venice bent over double from the weight of our backpacks and delighted in Paris, we did have to manage expectations – of ourselves, of each other, of being together – no matter what hope we held in our hearts. Like in any relationship.

In a town in Italy – my almost-40-year-old brain has difficultly remembering which – I was tired of walking, and cold. I needed a hot drink. And a chair. Both of which I reasonably expected to find in any of the dozens of Italian cafés lining the streets. Hopefully I would be re-energized after just such a break.

The price of a hot tea increases some if you drink it while sitting in the cozy café – it is cheaper to take it to go, or to drink it standing at the counter. Neither of which were appealing to me right then. I just wanted to sit down.

But the rand-lira exchange was not favorable in 1995, and Boyfriend had planned it all out so carefully, and this detour and drink were already unexpected so there would definitely be no slow sipping of tea while seated.

I was disappointed. He was right. (Of course, at the time I did not tell him he was right – I told him how insensitive and idiotic he was, and I may have shed a few tired and frustrated tears). My expectations of tea and rest were not completely realized, and so I was disappointed. But I got the te caldo to go and I’m sure we found a lovely bench somewhere on the street, and the rest of the day went on as wonderfully as all the days before and after – which was what I had hoped for that trip: days of wonder discovering Florence and Zurich, the Spanish Steps, Avignon and the Eiffel Tower.