BAT MITZVAH GIRL

Today marks the anniversary of my Bat Mitzvah. 30 years, believe it or not. I'd like to thank my oldest friend Irisa for remembering this date, and calling me to wish me Happy Anniversary of Your Bat Mitzvah. (Are there cards for that? There should be. Let's see, Wendi: April 19, 1974; Irisa: October 22, 1977, Me: May 14, 1977. I really don't know any others, but I can recite the first three lines of Wendi's Haftorah).

So, at dinner tonight, I said to the girls (who are both studying for their b.m.'s which will be in March), the following:

ME: Today is the 30th anniversary of a very important event for me. Can anybody guess what it is? (Now they are both intelligent, and sort of educated, so you would think it would dawn on one of them)

DAUGHTER: (to remain nameless) Was this the day you and daddy met?
ME: NOoooooo (please note: that was 18 years ago, I didn't meet him in middle school)
DAUGHTER: Was this the day you went into labor with me? (please note: she is to turn 12 this week, not 30)
ME: Noooooo
DAUGHTER: I know, this is the anniversary of the Holocaust ending. (Um, not quite, but I'm quite impressed that she's thinking that broadly)

So there you go. Apparently the thirty years since my becoming a woman is an unimaginably long amount of time for a young girl. Amazing. Because to me, I can still remember thinking that the day of my Bat Mitzvah would NEVER come. And to me, I can still feel the hurt that the boy I kind of had a crush on spent the time at the reception talking to his "girlfriend" on the payphone. And most of all, I still feel the sting of disappointment and disbelief when I picked up the phone in my kitchen that morning, and I heard my Grandmom tell my Mother, that she couldn't be there at my Bat Mitzvah. (My grandfather had suffered a small stroke just days before.) I remember her telling my mom that her place was with him. Not with us. My mom wore sunglasses the whole day, so no one would see her eyes swollen with tears.

I never realized it before, but maybe that WAS the day I became a woman. Or just a little more grown up. Because in that moment, listening to my grandmother's voice, I realized that she WAS where she was supposed to be, and I really understood her pain. I don't know that a little girl would understand as well. So I guess in a way, I really did grow up that day.

And now I am my mother, planning my daughters' bat mitzvah(s) and praying that my daughters don't have to learn the same lesson that I did.

So there you go.