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.

One Shoe Off

Posted on April 16, 2015 by Nicki

What’s special about these shoes is that they have tiny Darth Vaders and Storm Troopers checkered all over them. Even to a non-Star Wars fan, that’s pretty cool. Other than that, they’re unremarkable.

Comfortable. Versatile. Durable. Functional. Although only a few months old, they are scuffed and well-worn. Their white soles already marked from climbing trees and exploring parks, playgrounds and backyards. They are I’m-a-big-kid-now shoes, full of adventure, potential, growth, and a future of life and possibility. We know they won’t fit him forever, but for now, they’re perfect.

The problem with these shoes is that one is lost. An active afternoon of earnest play and fun brought him home with one shoe on, and one shoe most definitely off. Gone. Tossed over the hedge. Hidden in the neighbor’s brush. Unable to be found and never to be seen again. Not even with a ladder.

The problem with shoes, all shoes, is that they’re absolutely useless when one is missing. There’s not much you can do with one shoe. Actually, there’s nothing you can do with one shoe. Shoes operate together. In a pair. Two shoes are a run on a hot beach or a walk on a snow-covered road. They’re a party, a movie or a game of tennis. They’re a small boy climbing in a tree with his friends because that’s what small boys do, or a quiet stroll with the one you love on a warm, gentle evening.

They watch us, our shoes. They bear witness to our journeys and adventures, our struggles and our joy, our fear, our pain, our elation and our weariness. They are quiet and present, completely inanimate. But if they could talk with their long, wagging tongues or the short ones that never seem to come out all the way, they would have much to share about our lives and experiences in this world.

Only if there are two.

Two shoes are how it works. One shoe is futile.

***

Last week I met someone new in my life: Dr. Andy. Dr. Andy is a wonderful doctor, kind and caring, attentive and empathic. With entertaining and honest personal stories that he loves to share. Partly, I imagine, to put his patients at ease, and also because he enjoys the opportunity to make them laugh, cry, gasp in horror or frown in concern. To hear them say, “Are you serious?” or “I’m so happy for you!” or “Oh no, I’m sorry.” He tells his stories because he wants the people he is with at that moment to share in his experiences. To offer them a way to relate to him, and probably a way for him to relate back. As is the human condition. We relate to each other. It’s how we work.

I hope I don’t have to see Dr. Andy too often, but I loved our few minutes together. He confirmed I did not have pneumonia, and told me he had been feeling similar: congested, feverish, with a nasty cough and difficulty breathing. But before he did that he told me about his father, a Holocaust survivor, whose 90-something-year-old mind and body are frail and almost incompetent.

In lucid moments the old father shares memories and stories with Dr. Andy and tells his son how proud he is of him. Andy showed me a photo of his father’s number from Auschwitz, tattooed forever into his arm. It is blurred with age and time, and the green ink screams in stark contrast to his wrinkled, harmless skin.

I don’t have a known relative who survived the Holocaust. But by the time Dr. Andy finished telling me about his beautiful father, we both had tears in our eyes. The horrific death of six million Jews and the widespread hatred, panic and desolation of the Holocaust is a close and personal experience for many. And it is also a collective experience. One we experience as Jews, as people, as humans all over the world. Never forget.

At the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. there is a permanent exhibition I have visited with my son: shoes. An enormous gray pile of 4,000 tattered shoes.

The Nazis confiscated the shoes of Holocaust victims in the killing centers of Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Chelmno, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau. When Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau were liberated, the troops found hundreds of thousands of pairs of shoes. And very few living prisoners.

You have never seen anything like this sea of shoes.

source: ushmm.org

Above the awful, heart-searing collection is an excerpt from the poem “I Saw a Mountain” by Holocaust survivor and Yiddish poet Moses Schulstein z”l:

We are the shoes, we are the last witnesses.

We are shoes from grandchildren and grandfathers.

From Prague, Paris, and Amsterdam,

And because we are only made of fabric and leather

And not of blood and flesh, each one of us avoided the hellfire.

My boy’s lonely shoe will never more run down the street with his brothers nor look for snails with his friends. Not again will it witness the free, growing life of hope and possibility. It’s useless on its own.

But I’m going to hang onto it.

Never forget.

This is a Finish the Sentence Friday post, inspired by the prompt, “When it comes to the end of the world…” Hosted by Kristi from Finding Ninee, and co-hosted by me and by Jena (this week’s sentence thinker-upper) of JenaSchwartz.com.

Tall Trees, Mosquitos, Ga-ga… Magic

Posted on May 20, 2014 by Nicki

Dust everywhere. Incessant mosquitos that attack any exposed stretch of flesh, with a bloodthirsty affection for the neck and ankles. The dark night is chillingly cold, except near the warmly leaping flames where it’s suddenly and uncomfortably too hot. The bathroom is many, many, many miles away, on the other side of terrain treacherously strewn with gigantic tree roots and fallen logs hiding in plain dark sight. Easier, safer to hold it in.

(Actually, the bathroom is less than 200 meters from the campfire and there is only one potentially, not-really-dangerous exposed tree root. But everything is amplified in the dark).

Tall, tall pine and redwood trees stretch their lean, leafy necks right up to the moon. The inky black sky and its twinkly blanket of stars keep everything hushed. Whispered. Even the guitar’s lazy strums and the low, rumbly voices talking about everything and nothing float quietly in the night. Sometimes splashes of laughter musically disturb the drifting melodies, and tumble gently into the crackling orange fire.

The mystery of sleep-away camp: where you feel so uncomfortable, and so exquisitely happy all at once. Where the icy wind stretches its long skinny fingers into your sleeping bag, but you curl yourself up even tighter and those fingers tip-toe away, stealth like a ninja. An owl hoots in the trees above, the frogs are loud and the crickets are louder, and the last thing you see before you fall soundly asleep is the bright full moon peering down at you through its frondy redwood veil.

Camp is a magical place. It’s dirty and rustic and very, very dark at night. Hot and buggy during the day, everything is a bit (or a lot) of a schlep, and no matter how prepared you are, you’re never prepared enough. You smell vilely and chemically like insect repellant, sunscreen and sweat, always thirsty or hungry or both. Your neck itches and your eyes stream and no matter how dirty you think you are, you are definitely going to get even dirtier.

That’s right… magical.

Because somehow all the dirt, and mosquito bites, and attacking allergies that make you sneeze 700 times in a row are left in the doorless cabin as the bell sounds for breakfast: cheesy eggs, English muffins and raisin bran with organic milk. None of those taste half as delicious at home. The fear of heights is checked on the ground as you’re hoisted to the very top of the world (or at least to the top of the gigantic pine trees), and that paralyzing panic leaves your gut with the butterflies as you release the clip and swing like a monkey through the trees, whooping and shrieking with pure, exhilarated glee.

My monkey moment!

There’s candle-making and Herbal 911. Brew potions for lip balm and lotion, learn beekeeping and blacksmithing and how to create fire. Maybe you zip-line at 90 feet or 80 feet or not at all, throw knives, train to be a ninja, tie-dye, yoga, read in a hammock, do nothing… or play Ga-ga.

Ga-ga was invented in Israel and is similar to dodgeball. But somehow less malicious. And less ridiculous. Played in an octagonal pit, It combines dodging, striking, running and jumping and the object is to hit the other players with a ball below the knee while avoiding being hit. (Did I say less ridiculous? Maybe not). The most inclusive, non-discriminatory, contained game I’ve ever seen – also one of the most exciting.

It epitomizes the magic of camp.

Even ninjas play Ga-ga

It’s every rule you learned as a child come to real life: no cheating, no hurt feelings, no injuries. Nobody left out. No arguments. Girls. Boys. Grown-ups. Kids. Ages 5-55. Counselors and campers. That Ga-ga pit is rarely empty. And everybody is smiling.

And while these are certainly the types of interactions we strive for on the playground, in the workplace, at home, in life, this is not what makes Ga-ga and Camp so magical for me.

What’s magical is the feeling of “together” – we are here together, in it together, dirty together, creating, freezing, eating, singing, itching, playing, swinging, being together. And not only are we together, but also I “got” you and I know you got me.

The Ga-ga pit was the nucleus of the family camp this past weekend. There must’ve been 40 players – mostly kids – in it at any given time. They cheered each other on. Encouraged. Looked out for the littles, and taught the older ones the rules. They were both fair and competitive, and not one player felt neglected, sidelined, less good than another.

I swung from trees, dyed T-shirts, baked bread outside and almost shaved the skin off my fingers striking a fire with steel and flint. I did something new with each one of my kids (except ninja training – really, no interest) and watched a lot of Ga-ga. The mosquitos gnawed at my neck, my throat was always dry and my hands were constantly stained with tie-dye and very, very grimy. In between games I arched my whole back in a half-moon to catch a glimpse of the very tallest tree scraping the bluest sky.