Hurricane winds lifting me

They say there's a storm coming, that it's going to be big.  That it may hit New York and New Jersey with fierce, destructive winds, hurricane force winds.  But thankfully it looks like it will hit the day after Ben's Bar Mitzvah.  So we'll be spared.  The service, the kiddish, the luncheon in Montclair will go as planned. This morning is the dry run, the Thursday morning minyan, when Ben will wear the taffillin, the black leather strapped on his wrists, the small black box jutting from his far head. He will read a bit, test out his nerves.  Then we will be catering the breakfast, bagels from Sonny's and nova lox, our family practicing for the big day.

It's a beautiful sweet service.  There are just a handful of congregants, older gray-haired men, kind-hearted women smiling at us. Immediately I become the proud Jewish mother.  When we first arrive they are all congratulating me and Rob, patting Ben on the shoulder.  The Rabbi sits next to Ben and coaches him, leaning into him, explaining about the tzit, tzit, the fringes on his Tallis, his prayer shawl.  I look to my son wearing the leather, his shimmering blue tallis with matching kipah, and then look to the older male congregants wearing their well-worn version.  Ben with his soft boyish skin, davening with the older men, mouthing the hebrew.  I see the lifeline of Judaism, Ben's place in line.  It is so beautiful, I want to cry.

If I can count this morning's minyan as 1/3 of the Bar Mitzvah, I'd be content.  It went so well, the congregation were such menches, so sweet.  The rabbi was wonderful, focusing entirely on Ben, guiding him, whispering in his ear the entire service.  And despite Ben's rebelliousness to many things Jewish, his questioning of the process, his digging in his heels, today it can not be denied, he is officially a jew!

I'm just hoping tomorrow night, the Friday night service goes this well, I sort of think it will.  It's like now I'm floating along, I've done all the work, and now I'm just gliding through, the wind under me.  I can do no wrong, we are blessed.

carol

Carol taking me shopping today.  She's come back into my life with a vengence, tossing me a Bar Mitvah life raft in my hour of need. She’s my one college friend with a kid Ben’s age, her son’s Bar mitzvah just last year, and different from me, she seems to revel in the planning.  So each morning we check in, decide which store in the Short Hills Mall to meet, to begin the search for red shoes with that most rarified half-inch heel, neckless for the v-neck dress, stockings, a black bra.

We first met at Rutgers College, my last year there. She was interviewing roommates for her off-campus apartment and after talking for hours about the NJ Jewish Y camp where we both had gone, she since childhood, me following what would become an unrequited love at age nineteen, asked me to move in.  Each day we’d talk late into the night, go on egg diets together, sit on her bed as she'd strum Bob Dillon tunes, her long brown hair falling over her shoulders. Eventually I’d introduce her to her own unrequited love, my brother Paul, whom she'd date for years.  She would become like a sister to me and though over the years we'd lost some of our closeness, in the last week she had morphed once again into my closest friend.  Only she was making me tense.  Over the years we both had perfected our type A personalities but it seemed she had pushed hers to new heights.  She was on a mission, Ben's Bar Mitzvah mission, and would drive an hour from Freehold to turn her laser focus onto my daily list.  Only problem, each day that went by, I'd look over the things we had purchased together and realize it wasn't going to work.  We didn't share the same taste, actually neither of us had the best taste.  But Betsy, the sales girl from Neiman Marcus did, so each time Carol and I would say goodby, I'd take the elevator up to Betsy and show her what we had bought and she'd shake her head no. 

"Those shoes--not with that dress.  You're looking way too Chanel with that Kate Spade block heel, you need to be more Audrey Hepburn.  You need a pointy heel.  Try a kitten pump.  And forget red.  You want black. Try Stuart Weizman, downstairs to the right. "

... a few days later, "It's a cute neckless, perfect with a white tee shirt, but not for your dress.  Actually forget a neckless, earrings should be your focus."

I had to tell Carol.  Not an option to have her sitting at the temple watching in horror as I approach the bima in pointy black shoes, sans neckless.  But it wouldn't be easy, considering how many  stores she had pulled me into, how thrilled she was with each and every score, as though our wayward boat had finally reached land.  I knew I was turning into mince meat, agreeing with her mostly to reconnect, to feel the warm glow of our long lost college friendship. I had to be honest with her.  A few days later I called her.

"Carol, I have something to tell you. Betsy, you remember Betsy, from Neiman, well she said the shoes and neckless were wrong for the dress. And well, let's face it, she does this for a living. But I'm keeping the neckless, even she loved it, just not with the dress."

"Lori, it's not a problem. I understand. Are you keeping the shoes?"

"No, I returned them today."

"Oh, good."

I love Carol, I want to hug her. But there's something else I have to tell her, even more painful.

"And Carol, I asked Ben if he minded you coming by at 7:30 the morning of his Bar Mitzvah to oversee my hair and makeup. He thought it would be awkward."

"Lori, that's fine, I understand, he doesn't see that much of me. No problem."

I tell myself, it's these little things that I'm so grateful for in this Bar Mitzvah process.  Carol back in my life is worth this entire stressed-out process. I truly forgot how important she is to me, how much we have in common, how much I missed her.  I trust her with my life, in all things important, fashion not being one of them.

I awoke at 1:30 in the morning and just let the adrenaline surge through my body till 4:00 after which I miraculously fell back to sleep.  It's that awful checklist, plus now that it's down to the wire, things like will I remember everyone's names, let alone their kids who I hardly see; will Ben and Rob's paisley print ties get wrinkled in the Norstrom's bag or should I have hung them; might the leg makeup I bought at Sapphora's to cover those bright red mosquito bites and black and blue bruises from scratching to death, begin running down my leg just as I approach the bima?

But as I'm sitting here typing this morning I know that mostly everything is done, to just to let it roll and go with it.  Still,  just yesterday the president of the temple e-mailed me with a request to write something about Ben for his congratulation speech at the conclusion of the Bar Mitzvah.  Did I overdo it with the bright kid, good in math, stuff.  Did I really need to say he's in honor's math.  Put a muzzle on it Sender.  So today I wrote him asking him to send me back what he might be saying for my review.

If I can count this morning's minyan as 1/3 of the Bar Mitzvah, I'd be content.  It went so well, the congregation were such menches, so sweet.  The rabbi was wonderful, focusing entirely on Ben, guiding him, whispering in his ear the entire service.   There were only around 20 people there, I did an aliya, and mostly without nerves! Ben and the white-haired men, some in suits, some in sneakers, strapping the black leather tefillin around their far heads and wrists.  I was so proud, everyone congratulating me.  And despite Ben's rebelliousness to many things Jewish, his questioning of the process, his digging in his heels, today it can not be denied, he is officially a jew!

I'm just hoping tomorrow night, the Friday night service goes this well, I sort of think it will.  It's like now I'm floating along, I've done all the work, and how I'm on this magic carpet with Ben and Rob with the wind under me.  I can do no wrong, we are blessed.

It's been awful, I can't relax.  The clock is ticking and all I can do is go through my checklist.  Usually at 2 in the morning.  I try and tell myself it's only a Bar Mitzvah, only one day, well, technically two with Ben's kids' party a Friday night later, but still, it's just so fine wired to be stressful.  Little things like ordering beanie hats for sixty-five kids, that over-the-top added clothing bonus that all parents dutifully supply in each kid's goodie bag as they're leaving the party.  It's not enough you just broke the bank for the party, you have to hand them over a thick fleeced sweatshirt advertising that kid's Bar or Bat Mitzvah, best if placed in a drawstring nylon bag also shouting the kid's name and date of party. I'm being cheap and opting for a beanie, at least it doesn't take up an entire sweatshirt-filled row of a closet.

I'm on the phone with Branders, a customized hat company. I've just received four different UPS deliveries from various parts of the country with no clearcut way of telling which beanie was sent. I tell my salesman, Joshua, that we like the black beanie, not the blue beanie, not the black with red trim beanie, not the black with the orange logo, just the black beanie. He tells me he doesn't know which hat that is, to send him a photo of it, only that's the one hat Ben and I can't find in the house.

I tell him his system isn't exactly working, then send an email with UPS tracking numbers of each one he sent. By process of elimination maybe he can figure out which black beanie without a logo he sent us.

We haven't even gotten to the embroidery part yet, which Ben wants to say Ben's Bar est. 10-27-12 across the rim. Kind of cute in a tween soon to be drinking kind of way.

Then yesterday, in a fit of total panic that we hadn't yet bought Ben a suit or me a dress and the Bar Mitzvah only six weeks off, we all got in the car and drove to the that most expensive mall in NJ, the Short Hills Mall.  With Prada and Coach and Wilford stocking, it's  pure seduction walking towards Nordstrom's, that pragmatic choice of store. We work on Ben first, trying on a Joseph Abboud suit that in a size 16 boy's would fit maybe one week past his Bar Mitzvah, or a size 18 that makes him look like the boy in the movie "Big." We decide on the size 18 and hope for a growth spurt.  

So I'm back to looking for a job.  Craigslist seems to be the most direct way of finding independent pharmacies. Maybe it's my age, but when I see these byzantine online forms that corporations are requesting you fill out, I just say screw you, who are you to ask me to complete an application that will take more than an hour and you will never even open.  At least Craigslist reminds me of the 80s, when applying for a job was just a phone call away, where you at least get a sense of the personality of the company.  So it is that I cold call UMR Pharmacy in Jersey City and speak to the owner Zia.  Right away he sounds sweet, giggles when I say I'm looking for a laid back pharmacy, not so busy, no tension, no screaming bosses.  He suggests I start right away and then we'll see how it goes.  When I walk in I feel comfortable immediately, Zia introduces me to his sixty-eight-year old father Mohammed and to Bilal, a 23-year-old  pre-med student, who is working to earn money for coursework on a semester by semester basis.  Bilal will be my teacher.  He is so bright, knows more about pharmacy than anyone I've ever met and it dawns on me, I've landed in pure shit.  Not only can I learn from him in a stress-free environment, I have the perfect setup, I'm learning from a kid who basically has to answer to me.  And soon, he too realizes that he's lucky, that I will never be anything but thankful for the knowledge.

The little stuff

Ben won't help me on the computer.  We have just two more months before his Bar Mitzvah and we need to go over his party list and correct mistakes from the stationer.  It's the same old story, we sit side by side in the den, the annoying voice of Cartman from South Park as backdrop, and begin to go over our list.  I ask him a question and he won't lift an eye towards me.  "Ben, how do I line up the stationer's list next to mine?"  I know it's a simple minimizing and dragging, but I just can't seem to do it.  He will not make a move to help me.  I want to walk out the door and say the hell with this.  We don't need a Bar Mitzvah, what we need is a therapist.

We just came back from four days at Tanglewood before which I had orchestrated the purchase of one-hundred 65 cent stamps plus forty 45 cent stamps from Zazzle.com along with beanie cap samples from Lids.com to arrive perfectly timed when we got home yesterday.  Only nothing arrived.  I checked our stamp order and it said cancelled.  Apparently an e-mail had gone out to us while we were floating on our backs in Laurel Lake at the Berkshires explaining that the printing had gone poorly, was cropped wrong and did we still want it.  Ben showed me the e-mail once we got home and the halloween moon and cat on the 45 cent stamps had a larger boarder.  Now I was screwed.  It would take at least three days to get it printed again and by then we'd be in Seattle for the next ten days.  Which would put us a week behind schedule. Big deal.  I wonder when I got so fussy.  Somewhere around menopause I know for sure.

Rona can't believe I'd go to Zazzle anyway and pay so much for stamps.  She's right, USPS would have been fine, only our local post office only had "Dogs at Work" and a wedding cake.  But later that night I look online on USPS one more time and find a 65 cent butterfly stamp which surely would be the perfect metaphor for a boy's metamorphisis into manhood,  and a 45 cent celebrate stamp with candles and streamers which reminded me of a Chorus Line logo and is a perfect homage to the late Marvin Hamlisch.  None of which anyone will get.