The Countdown

My son Ben and I are in a screaming, drag-out fight. He doesn't want a Bar Mitzvah, isn't the least bit fazed by my 50% deposit on Maurice's Party Animals or the Maplewood Little Club. "I'm an atheist!" he yells, tears streaming down his face. "You can't tell me what to believe! It's my Bar Mitzvah!" I'm not falling for it, not for a minute, as if he's the first self-proclaimed atheist tween to try and worm out of a Bar Mitzvah. We've been going at it for over an hour and I'm feeling battle fatigue, conjuring displacement to any sunny, warm-island beach. I'm thinking Cozumel before the hurricane, or Chicxulub, Mexico before the kidnappings, or what the heck, Bradley Beach, NJ, exit 100 off the parkway, right now, as in jump in the car, and simply disappear to some unknown Starbucks a mile in from the ocean. I keep waiting for this little person foaming in front of me to back down, kind of whimper off to the den. But he seems so determined, so full of conviction, like a mini-Terminator who keeps resurrecting from a sniffling heap and going at me.

This fight seems different. Not like our usual I-don't-want-to-go-to-hebrew-school-today tug-o-war. There's such anger. His eyes are full of hate. I'm at a loss. He's only 4' 9", weighs under 100 pounds, still has that angelic, sweet face and soft, chubby cheeks, and yet, I know he's a force that can get me to drink. And there I am grabbing for the Manischewitz in the fridge. "You are fucking getting Bar Mitzvah!" I screech, throwing back a half-glassful of wine. My shrillness is killing me, I'm fully out of control. I tell myself I would never hit him in my rage, but I'm fully aware an irrational lunatic stands before him. Is it possible I could belt him one? I haven't hit him since he was two years old, when I forced his tiny hands to pick up a sprawl of legos across our kitchen floor. Later that day I admitted it to Dr. Gruenwald, his pediatrician, during a routine checkup, and he calmly reprimanded me, "Never hit your child. Ever." And I never did again. Never really even came close. Until today.

I tell Ben that his friend Avery will not be able to come over after school the next day, a Friday. The tears start again and unbelieveably with all the strength of my soul, I call his mom Dawn.

"Dawn, I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to cancel with Avery . . . Ben is just not listening to me. He's giving me a really hard time on his Bar Mitzvah." Dawn knows this is big. She's kind, as usual, tells me this is important, and I feel a telepathic understanding between us, an unspoken link between moms, that if he behaves the date will be back on.

The next morning when I come down to make breakfast, Ben is sitting at the computer reciting his torah Trope, the egg timer clicking in the background. I immediately call Dawn and we whisper in relief.

As Ben leaves for school, he turns to me. "If I'm going to do all this learning, tutoring, trope, I want you to learn the trope too. I want you to do an "aliya" on the bima that day."

"What? I can barely read hebrew anymore. Ben, I'd be too nervous. Are you serious?"

"Cereal mom, I'm cereal."

I send off an e-mail to his tutor Howard and enroll in his adult trope class, starting, as luck would have, that night.

The countdown has begun. Ben's Bar Mitzvah is Oct 27,2012. 9 months from now.