For the next seven days we turn our attention to these little lima beans. I’m sure that Scout will find her way into some of these posts but this week, Ben and Kit take center stage. A week from tomorrow, Ben and Kit will become Jewish adults.
I’m excited for them. I’m proud of them. They have worked really hard (much harder than I ever remember working for any of my Catholic milestone ceremonies) and it will give us such joy to celebrate them.
It will also be a joy for us to bring our family and friends together. It’s really only happened once before for us – at Scout’s bat mitzvah. Unlike other couples who have been together 24 years, we didn’t have a wedding in July 1983. There’s no wedding album. We haven’t had a big anniversary party and no one sends us anniversary cards. I don’t say this in an “oh poor us” way at all. It is what it is. I say it because it makes a celebration like the upcoming one even more precious to us.
I know that a bar / bat mitzvah is supposed to be a transformative experience for the newly crowned Jewish adult standing on the bimah (altar for you Christian readers out there). I know they learn a great deal about themselves in the process. But I think that at Scout’s bat mitzvah in 2002, I feel like I became a Jewish adult. In an Irish Catholic sort of way. You see, they tell you the kids are supposed to learn alot from the experience. No one tells you how much you learn.
You learn about the power of publicly acknowledging your children – standing in front of your community of friends and family and talking publicly about what you kid means to you. It’s surprisingly hard to do – public “sharing” isn’t always easy. That’s probably why we all don’t do it often enough. I learned how much it means to your J.A. (Jewish adult). Particularly at this time in their lives.
They are no longer lima beans. Or maybe matzoh balls would be the better analogy. What I really learned about bat and bar mitzvah celebrations is that they are timed brilliantly. In many ways it is the perfect ceremony at the perfect age.
I think of it as “Last Exit Before Bridge.” With Scout it seemed like moments after she became bat mitzvah, she started to move in some different direction. It was at this moment that we began to contend with the challenging terrain of the teenage years, years in which we often spoke and acted as if we didn’t like each other very much. Actually there was much more screaming than speaking.
The ceremony launches them in a way – into a new world. A world in which they are given more rope, a world in which we learn to start to let go of them – just a little – to see what happens.
Equally as important, the ceremony grounds them in the world they have always known. It reinforces the importance of family, of culture, of heritage and of faith. Without this foundation, it is much more difficult to stay on the bucking bronco that is the teenage years.
I didn’t know all this when Scout had her bat mitzvah. It’s something I learned in the months and years that have followed.
And so we will stand on the bimah next Saturday and, knowing what I now know, I can imagine that it will be very emotional. It is, for us, the day when we have to begin to redefine what it means to hug someone tight.
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