Moving forward as a family

KELLEY KORBIN

There are a lot of zombies walking around our house. By that, I mean that we aren't getting a lot of sleep these days. The reason? The imminent bar mitzvah of our firstborn.

Jake, my baby, who is about to make the miraculous transformation from boy to man, is busy juggling his bar mitzvah studies with adjusting to his new social life in the eighth grade. With high school, a whole new social world has opened up for him – and yet, just when he's ready to go and hang out (or do whatever it is 13-year-olds do when they get together in giant packs), there's that darn maftir to master. Add homework and rugby into the mix and you get one very tired soon-to-be man. Only once he finally puts his head on the pillow, even after a cup of warm vanilla milk, all the thoughts running through his head are making it hard to sleep. That's how I know he really is growing up. Little kids don't lie awake at night worrying about their responsibilities.

While my youngest son, Seth (who's six), is also having trouble sleeping, his problem is a little less complex: he's afraid of the dark. And although he is dutifully learning Ein Keloheinu to sing at his big brother's special day, that doesn't seem to be a worry that his trusty blankie and thumb won't soothe.

My 10-year-old daughter Sophie doesn't have much to worry about for the ceremony either. After all, she only has to recite a couple of prayers that she has already mastered – although there is the small matter of finding that elusive Saturday morning outfit and matching shoes that seems to be keeping sleep at bay for her.

My husband is fretting, too. And while I'm sure the impending bar mitzvah bills are weighing heavily on his mind, I think it's more the fact that he, a convert (or Jew by choice, if you like) will be reading from the Torah for the first time, in honor of his son's bar mitzvah. Although Don speaks fluent Japanese, learning to read and chant Hebrew has been a real challenge for him. As I write this, I can hear him upstairs, serenading me with the lines from Jake's parashah, Lech Lechah. This parashah from Genesis tells the story of God's covenant with Abraham and God's promise to make a great nation from Abraham's progeny. If there was ever a more fitting parashah for a son and converted father to perform together, I don't know what it would be. Nonetheless, a little of the divine significance of it all seems to be getting lost on Don in his panic to perfect his Torah reading.

Me, I'm up all night worrying about the details. As a certified (and certifiable) control freak, I am anxious about everything. I am trying my hardest to confine my anxiety to only the minutiae that I can actually do something about, like tablecloth colors, guest lists and how to assign honors without alienating friends and family (the last seems an impossible task), and leave Jake and Don to worry about whether or not they know their lines and have written their speeches.

Speaking of guest lists, one of my worries has been how all our non-Jewish friends will feel at the bar mitzvah. This worry has been sparked by some of the myriad questions I've been getting, like: Do I have to wear a beanie? How long is the service?

So, at night as I lay awake in bed pondering these and other questions, I mentally prepared the e-mail I would send out the next day to my well-meaning non-Jewish friends.

The first question, about the beanie, was easy to answer. I told my guests that, yes, the men should wear a kippah in the synagogue as a sign of respect and, no, they don't have to bring their own – one will be provided for them. As for the one about the length of the service, that was a little trickier for me. Don't get me wrong – after a year of bar mitzvah preparation, I have actually learned to enjoy Saturday morning services, but let's face it, if you're not familiar with the process and the ritual, it can be pretty overwhelming. I didn't want to scare off my friends, and yet I knew that it was important they be prepared. So, while I didn't exactly mention that they would be captive for close to three hours of a complex Hebrew ceremony that involves a lot of getting up and sitting down and getting up again, I did cut them some slack and let them know that while it might seem like a wedding in the preparations, a bar mitzvah is not exactly like a wedding in that it is not absolutely imperative to arrive exactly on time. I talked about the meaning of the ceremony and the rich traditions and then guilted them with information about how hard Jake has been studying for his special day. Of course, I also bribed them with the promise of a delicious lunch as a reward to sitting through the ceremony.

But in truth, it isn't really details like these that are keeping me up. No, I think it's more the idea that I am the mother of the bar mitzvah boy. How can this be? I read in Putting God on the Guest List, a great book by Jeffrey K. Salkin about finding the true meaning of bar mitzvah, that as much as a bar mitzvah is a coming of age ceremony for the bar mitzvah boy/man, it is a coming of middle age for his parents. Although, at 40, I guess I have technically hit middle age, I sure don't feel it. And yet, going through the planning process of the bar mitzvah has made me acutely aware of the passage of time. As Don and I have spent hours looking through old photos for the slide show at Jake's party, I have found myself mourning not only Jake's youth, but my own – which seems to have slipped away in a frenzy of diapers, training wheels and lost teeth.

As I look at my newly adolescent firstborn, I realize that there's no going back for him or for me. So, as much as the ceremony is a rite of passage for Jake, to mark an otherwise invisible threshold between life stages, it is also a marker for me – a signpost that has forced me to slow down and take stock of who I am and where I'm going.

Kelley Korbin is a freelance writer living in West Vancouver.

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