He’s come of age, I’m on a stretcher
HA theme suggests your child is interesting enough to have interests. In the end we went with shoes
AVING STUDIED anthropology at university I was aware of some of the more colourful rites of passage across the world; the Satere Mawe tribe in Brazil who put their hand in a glove of bullet ants for ten minutes without making a sound, the Mandan Native American tribe with the famous hook-hanging ceremony, which culminates in chopping off their left finger, and of course the Israelite tribe, who learn to read and analyse some text. It’s in the aftermath of this latter practice, my eldest son Mordechai’s barnitzvah last month, that I can definitively state that the most fearsome and trying ritual of all is …the throwing of a barmitzvah party.
Few peoples have to endure the kind of deprivation necessary in the undertaking of this kind of “celebration”, and I’m not just talking about the financial sacrifices necessary to pay for it. Ego, general fitness, creativity, organisational skills, discipline. They all come into play, they must all be operating at peak levels after months of preparation and training. As you nod to fellow bar/bat mitzvah parents with the mutual recognition of weary respect, it’s only from going through the trials yourself, that you can truly appreciate what it takes. However, with this season nearly over and the scorecards mostly full, I wish to share what I’ve learned to the benefit of future competitors.
Get your nagging in early. This may be the first opportunity for your children to learn the most valuable lesson of adulthood: small regular steps get you to your goal. This entire enterprise is a means of indoctrinating them with the idea that you if work hard there are lots of presents and a party at the end of it. It’s a vital concept, alas one that most of us seem to forget at the first opportunity as we instead dash from one deadline to the next. But now the cycle is complete, and here’s your opportunity for redemption; to finally imbed and pass on this wisdom via constant nagging, which will also remind you to get on with booking the venue, DJ, food etc. Or you can leave everything to the last minute and beyond and have a massive meltdown and just manage to scrape across the finish line like we did. Chancing it is also a valuable lesson.
Spreadsheets are your friend.We’ve been very fortunate with recent barmitzvah trends. I remember the days when everything seemed to be a sit down dinner. Maybe the wealthy Jews are still at it, I wouldn’t know, but what this means for the rest of us is the blessing of the buffet. We went a step further and just had pizzas that were frisbee’d to the baying hordes straight from the pizza ovens like fish to seals.
But even though you no longer need to agonise and finesse over the politics of the seating chart, the invite list can still be a problem. Especially when it comes to people who you thought were friends, but then lack of invites in either direction reveal a harsh truth that they’re in fact the parents of your child’s primary school friend.
So, get organised and keep on top of who you actually like and how often you socialise, even book in a get together, unless you want to lose them in a bitter mutual culling. And of course don’t forget to jot down exactly who gave your child what. Not for thank you cards, but to ensure that you return exactly the same money when it’s their turn.
Inspiration is 100 per cent perspiration. While not being as mental in this regard as our American cousins, some attempt at a theme goes a long way towards making your job easier, and suggests your child is interesting enough to have interests. The problem is that your child is unlikely to be interesting enough to have interests. Just because they liked Lego when they were eight isn’t going to cut it.
So, hijack their phone, grab a magnifying glass and trawl through their existence in the hope of finding ANYTHING to latch the invite, decorations, music onto. In the end we went with shoes.
Get your trainers on. You need to banish middle-aged malaise and kickstart your metabolism, those chairs aren’t going to lift themselves. If you’re lucky your child won’t have gone through puberty yet because after a few initial bounces, every thrust will remind you that this is the first exercise you’ve done since lifting the kid from the cot. Then your wife has a go up there, and after ten seconds you start wondering if anyone will have any strength left to put you on a stretcher. By your turn all you can do is guilty glance down at your male friends for forgiveness as they shvitz away. To quote a friend, Hashem Meleh sure goes on for an eternity when you’re trapped under someone’s butt.” Mazeltov!