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Bar Mitzvahs, Cousins and Margaritas
I went home on Thursday night for my little brother Benjamin's Bar Mitzvah, and aside from a few annoyances, I had an enjoyable long weekend. It has generated an appropriately long post, which I have put behind a cut.
I felt pretty good coming home, because I now have a job lined up after college. That helped cut down on any possible anxiety about my mom's complaints - although she didn't complain much at all about my weight, or about the fact that I hadn't gotten a manicure or pedicure, which was sort of her fault because she'd forgotten to put my allowance in my bank account and the place I go to around here doesn't take credit cards. I was also worried about wearing the open-toed high-heeled shoes she'd gotten for me, which were nice, expensive and terribly uncomfortable, although they caused less trouble than I anticipated. Mom says I need to practice wearing them. Fuck that. I'll only wear those torture devices if I absolutely have to. But I'm getting off the subject.
Benjamin was actually glad to see me home and introduced me to the game he'd rented - Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal. He seems to enjoy bossing people through video games as much as he does playing them. I didn't complain because it meant I could use his PS2. Daniel came home later that night. He made facetious complaints about the length of Benjamin's Bar Mitzvah service: "You know, the Pope's funeral is only going to be three hours long. Why does Benjamin's Bar Mitzvah have to take forever? I bet the Pope's Bar Mitzvah took less than an hour."[1]
The next day was full of Bar Mitzvah preparations. Dad had to take me to a hair salon in Tyson's Corner (that's in Virginia, it's about a forty minute drive from our house) to get my hair styled, which I did not complain about because this was a special occasion and I have actually come to think it worth the effort to make my hair look nice. The reason we went that far is because the stylist who owns the hair salon is a specialist in the Ouidad technique, which is a special way of cutting and styling hair to make it nice and curly. We went home, then put on our nice clothes and went to the synagogue for photo shoots and a quick rehearsal of our respective Torah portions. I had one, Dad had one, and of course Benjamin had one. Daniel didn't, so I kept calling him a slacker. He and Benjamin were surprisingly well-behaved throughout the whole process of having pictures taken, even though they normally resent it. I think it was because the photographer was more friendly than photographers usually are, even when they're getting paid an exhorbitant amount of money. I tried to make lots of jokes so that everyone would have natural smiles in the photographs. Daniel told me that natural smiles and "photo smiles" are triggered by completely different sections of the brain, which is why it's so hard to smile on command for a photo. We had some outdoor pictures. It was nice outside, because there are lots of things blossoming and the trees are starting to put out leaves, but it was also muddy, and my high heels kept sinking in the mud.
After the photo shoot, I went to yet another salon to get a manicure and pedicure. The chairs people sat on for pedicures were actually massage chairs, which was cool. Amanda, my favorite childhood nanny (and Daniel's too), came to visit us. She was staying in the guest room. My father's sister Liz and her husband Wayne came with their sons, Wyatt and Noah. They both really like Benjamin. Noah was a bit shy around me until later the next day, when we got into a discussion of various injuries that we and people we knew had suffered, with details about stitches, casts and other exciting stuff. My paternal uncle, my father's younger brother, also stopped by briefly with his daughter (more on this later).
The next day was The Actual Event. I was excited to see and greet so many people at the synagogue, although there were a lot of people there who I should have known but didn't - like my mother's cousins and some of my dad's friends and former neighbors.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
scifantasy's parents were there and I didn't recognize them, which is inexcusable, but also very me. Anyway, I waited impatiently through the opening prayers until the Torah service, which is the really exciting bit. Now you may say, "I thought she'd be sick of Torah services by now, since she's been studying them for the past few months." Not so. I am a Bryn Mawr student and an anthropology major: I obsess over my study subjects the way serious fangirls obsess over anime. Besides, I was going to do a Torah reading. My grandparents were doing the blessing.
I'm really glad that my cold cleared up, or the reading would have been a real problem, but I did very well at it. Or so I was told later, repeatedly, by our rabbi and various guests. My rabbi mentioned that I was writing a thesis on Torah reading, which I'd consulted him on. By the way, he and Mom and Dad made good speeches. Benjamin's was pretty good too, although he talked too fast. He also performed a lot better than I did when I became a Bat Mitzvah. Back then the congregation was a lot smaller and we were in the Jewish Community Center because we didn't have our own building, and the party was in our house because we'd moved in only a few months ago and didn't know of any places to rent for parties, and I had to walk ten miles to school in the snow and it was uphill both ways...
The party was at Rockwood Manor, where Daniel's party was. In spite of the huge number of cars in the parking lot, everyone managed to get out in relatively short order. I thought I'd been left behind by my parents, who were each taking one car, so I took a ride with my aunt Liz and uncle Wayne. Wayne backed into another car (it was double-parked, though) when we were leaving, but it didn't leave a mark. Or if it did, we couldn't tell, because the car was kind of dinged up already. On the way to Rockwood Manor, we passed a similar establishment or maybe a housing development called Woodrock. Fortunately my uncle was smart enough to keep the names straight and not go there.
Now, the party was pretty cool. There were separate rooms for the kids and adults, and the DJ played his music at a reasonable volume, which is rare at a Bar Mitzvah party. He was also playing songs that Daniel and Benjamin had selected, so there was none of the usual party crap (like the Hokey Pokey). There was some Brittney Spears and a few stupid numbers picked out by my little brother, but nothing too bad. The food was good, I got to talk to Amanda, and my friend Valerie's parents, and my rabbi was actually happy to hear me rattle on about my thesis. I promised to send him a copy. Dad said I should actually send him the rough draft (which is just about finished now) so he could check on certain things.
We danced the Horah, which was great fun. Mom, Dad and Benjamin actually got hoisted up in a chair. I don't think Daniel did. I didn't. It's sort of a dubious honor, being hoisted in a chair.
After the party was over and everything was cleaned up, we went home. I took a much-needed nap. We went out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Bethesda with Liz, Wayne, their kids and my grandparents. Mom ordered a pitcher of margaritas, her poison of choice, which I found out that I actually like. What's weird is, my mom tends to get really sleepy after having about two-thirds of a glass of wine, but she can drink an entire margarita without any ill effects. Weird.
We went to the local Ben & Jerry's for dessert. I told my aunt about Ben Cohen's short Flash movie for TrueMajority in which he explains the federal budget using Oreo cookies. This was when I had the conversation with my cousin Noah about various injuries. After the ice cream, the out-of-state relatives went back to their hotel, and we went home. I stayed up until the wee hours playing Ratchet and Clank, which was not a good idea.
The next morning (that is, this morning) we had a brunch for my grandparents, aunt, uncle and cousins. Mom's cousins also came to visit, and of course Amanda was there. My brothers and the little cousins played basketball outside. I joined them for a while but I stopped after I realized how much I suck at it. Noah, who is six, is a really good player, and made lots of baskets.
Daniel, since he goes to Columbia, left with Grandma and Grandpa. Amanda, my aunt Liz's family, and my mothers cousins departed, in that order. And, of course, I did too, and just managed to catch my scheduled train back here. I am wondering whether or not I should go home for Passover two weeks from now. I'll have all my thesis stuff finished by then. But I'll consider that question later.
I have only one major complaint (besides my evil high-heeled shoes), and that is concerned with a certain snobbish woman to whom I have the misfortune of being related by marriage. She's married to my father's youngest brother, and comes from a very rich family in Scarsdale. For those of you who didn't grow up in the New York metropolitan area, Scarsdale is in the NYC suburbs. So is Larchmont, where my father's parents live, and New Rochelle, where we used to live before we moved to Maryland. Anyway, this woman seemed nice enough when we first met her before she and my uncle got married, but since then - and especially since having kids - she seems to go out of her way to avoid my uncle's side of the family. I suppose she thinks it's beneath her to interact with anyone whose net household income totals less than half a million dollars a year. A slightly more charitable explanation of her behavior is that she's too absorbed in her own local world to care about anything outside it. My uncle, sadly enough, has just about let her cut him off from the rest of his family, which includes us.
In spite of my grandmother's insistence on the importance of my little brother's Bar Mitzvah, and my father's less forceful but frequent reminders aimed at getting him to come and bring the family along, he did not manage to get his wife and their little son (who I haven't seen except in pictures) to come. He visited with his daughter, a very sweet little girl who will probably be ruined by her mother. He only stayed for part of the party because he wanted to catch an early train back home. His wife, he said, was sick. I don't understand why my littlest cousin had to stay home with her. My uncle could handle him for an overnight trip. Mom speculates that they probably had an engagement with some classier people the next day and didn't want to take the trouble to come.
As far as I was concerned, my aunt's presence or absence didn't matter one way or the other. Unlike my mother's parents, who unfortunately weren't able to make it because they really are in bad health, her presence wouldn't be missed much. Except Mom had signed her up to open the Ark during the service along with my uncle, and said she'd get a real kick out of making my decidedly non-religious aunt actually do something Jewish.[2] She also hired one of Martina's friends (Martina is Benjamin's nanny) to take care of her son when they came, so my aunt would have no excuse not to participate.[3] Naturally Mom is upset. My grandparents were pretty upset too.
My aunt Liz and uncle Wayne managed to come from Colorado with their sons Wyatt and Noah, whose extreme rambunctiousness (even for young boys) and food allergies make traveling all the more complicated. My former nanny, Amanda, came all the way from Chicago even though it would put her way behind on her studying.[4] Other friends and relatives were able to come in from much, much further away than Scarsdale, which is a four-hour train ride from Maryland. My aunt should have been courteous enough to attend something this important, my uncle should have stood up to her, brought his son along and stayed for the whole party, and he shouldn't have acted like he was trapped in a room listening to a seminar on the finer points of tax law the whole time. He used to be really cool, like the way my brother Daniel is now except minus the off-color sense of humor. At least his daughter enjoyed herself. She played around a lot with Benjamin and my cousins from Colorado and didn't want to leave the party early.
Next time I plan to visit New York, I'm going to ask my grandparents to arrange something so I can see my little cousins and my uncle. They should remind him that I haven't seen the younger one at all. Although his crypto-shiksa wife may make him worm out of it at the last minute the way she usually does.
Now, I have about five hundred e-mails to clear out of my mailbox. That's what I get for signing on to the Bryn Mawr alumni listserve.
[1] I love my brother. I think he anddrakonous would get along famously. I'll have to see if I can introduce them when Daniel comes to visit me in Philadelphia, which he's going to do whether he likes it or not.
[2] She is Jewish, by the way, but doesn't give a damn. Her daughter doesn't go to Hebrew school and she had her son just get a hospital circumcision instead of a real bris. Even for a pretty non-observant person like myself, that's a shocking dereliction of duty, and it's even worse that my uncle didn't insist on it, since he grew up in a moderately Conservative family. If he'd been my mother's brother he would probably have been disowned.
[3] Our would-be babysitter ended up just shooting the breeze with Martina for most of the time and refused to accept payment, even though it was offered.
[4] Amanda has spent much of her adult life as a nanny. She's an extremely good one because of her natural talent with and love for children. Now she's studying to become an accredited teacher.
I felt pretty good coming home, because I now have a job lined up after college. That helped cut down on any possible anxiety about my mom's complaints - although she didn't complain much at all about my weight, or about the fact that I hadn't gotten a manicure or pedicure, which was sort of her fault because she'd forgotten to put my allowance in my bank account and the place I go to around here doesn't take credit cards. I was also worried about wearing the open-toed high-heeled shoes she'd gotten for me, which were nice, expensive and terribly uncomfortable, although they caused less trouble than I anticipated. Mom says I need to practice wearing them. Fuck that. I'll only wear those torture devices if I absolutely have to. But I'm getting off the subject.
Benjamin was actually glad to see me home and introduced me to the game he'd rented - Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal. He seems to enjoy bossing people through video games as much as he does playing them. I didn't complain because it meant I could use his PS2. Daniel came home later that night. He made facetious complaints about the length of Benjamin's Bar Mitzvah service: "You know, the Pope's funeral is only going to be three hours long. Why does Benjamin's Bar Mitzvah have to take forever? I bet the Pope's Bar Mitzvah took less than an hour."[1]
The next day was full of Bar Mitzvah preparations. Dad had to take me to a hair salon in Tyson's Corner (that's in Virginia, it's about a forty minute drive from our house) to get my hair styled, which I did not complain about because this was a special occasion and I have actually come to think it worth the effort to make my hair look nice. The reason we went that far is because the stylist who owns the hair salon is a specialist in the Ouidad technique, which is a special way of cutting and styling hair to make it nice and curly. We went home, then put on our nice clothes and went to the synagogue for photo shoots and a quick rehearsal of our respective Torah portions. I had one, Dad had one, and of course Benjamin had one. Daniel didn't, so I kept calling him a slacker. He and Benjamin were surprisingly well-behaved throughout the whole process of having pictures taken, even though they normally resent it. I think it was because the photographer was more friendly than photographers usually are, even when they're getting paid an exhorbitant amount of money. I tried to make lots of jokes so that everyone would have natural smiles in the photographs. Daniel told me that natural smiles and "photo smiles" are triggered by completely different sections of the brain, which is why it's so hard to smile on command for a photo. We had some outdoor pictures. It was nice outside, because there are lots of things blossoming and the trees are starting to put out leaves, but it was also muddy, and my high heels kept sinking in the mud.
After the photo shoot, I went to yet another salon to get a manicure and pedicure. The chairs people sat on for pedicures were actually massage chairs, which was cool. Amanda, my favorite childhood nanny (and Daniel's too), came to visit us. She was staying in the guest room. My father's sister Liz and her husband Wayne came with their sons, Wyatt and Noah. They both really like Benjamin. Noah was a bit shy around me until later the next day, when we got into a discussion of various injuries that we and people we knew had suffered, with details about stitches, casts and other exciting stuff. My paternal uncle, my father's younger brother, also stopped by briefly with his daughter (more on this later).
The next day was The Actual Event. I was excited to see and greet so many people at the synagogue, although there were a lot of people there who I should have known but didn't - like my mother's cousins and some of my dad's friends and former neighbors.
scifantasy's parents were there and I didn't recognize them, which is inexcusable, but also very me. Anyway, I waited impatiently through the opening prayers until the Torah service, which is the really exciting bit. Now you may say, "I thought she'd be sick of Torah services by now, since she's been studying them for the past few months." Not so. I am a Bryn Mawr student and an anthropology major: I obsess over my study subjects the way serious fangirls obsess over anime. Besides, I was going to do a Torah reading. My grandparents were doing the blessing.I'm really glad that my cold cleared up, or the reading would have been a real problem, but I did very well at it. Or so I was told later, repeatedly, by our rabbi and various guests. My rabbi mentioned that I was writing a thesis on Torah reading, which I'd consulted him on. By the way, he and Mom and Dad made good speeches. Benjamin's was pretty good too, although he talked too fast. He also performed a lot better than I did when I became a Bat Mitzvah. Back then the congregation was a lot smaller and we were in the Jewish Community Center because we didn't have our own building, and the party was in our house because we'd moved in only a few months ago and didn't know of any places to rent for parties, and I had to walk ten miles to school in the snow and it was uphill both ways...
The party was at Rockwood Manor, where Daniel's party was. In spite of the huge number of cars in the parking lot, everyone managed to get out in relatively short order. I thought I'd been left behind by my parents, who were each taking one car, so I took a ride with my aunt Liz and uncle Wayne. Wayne backed into another car (it was double-parked, though) when we were leaving, but it didn't leave a mark. Or if it did, we couldn't tell, because the car was kind of dinged up already. On the way to Rockwood Manor, we passed a similar establishment or maybe a housing development called Woodrock. Fortunately my uncle was smart enough to keep the names straight and not go there.
Now, the party was pretty cool. There were separate rooms for the kids and adults, and the DJ played his music at a reasonable volume, which is rare at a Bar Mitzvah party. He was also playing songs that Daniel and Benjamin had selected, so there was none of the usual party crap (like the Hokey Pokey). There was some Brittney Spears and a few stupid numbers picked out by my little brother, but nothing too bad. The food was good, I got to talk to Amanda, and my friend Valerie's parents, and my rabbi was actually happy to hear me rattle on about my thesis. I promised to send him a copy. Dad said I should actually send him the rough draft (which is just about finished now) so he could check on certain things.
We danced the Horah, which was great fun. Mom, Dad and Benjamin actually got hoisted up in a chair. I don't think Daniel did. I didn't. It's sort of a dubious honor, being hoisted in a chair.
After the party was over and everything was cleaned up, we went home. I took a much-needed nap. We went out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Bethesda with Liz, Wayne, their kids and my grandparents. Mom ordered a pitcher of margaritas, her poison of choice, which I found out that I actually like. What's weird is, my mom tends to get really sleepy after having about two-thirds of a glass of wine, but she can drink an entire margarita without any ill effects. Weird.
We went to the local Ben & Jerry's for dessert. I told my aunt about Ben Cohen's short Flash movie for TrueMajority in which he explains the federal budget using Oreo cookies. This was when I had the conversation with my cousin Noah about various injuries. After the ice cream, the out-of-state relatives went back to their hotel, and we went home. I stayed up until the wee hours playing Ratchet and Clank, which was not a good idea.
The next morning (that is, this morning) we had a brunch for my grandparents, aunt, uncle and cousins. Mom's cousins also came to visit, and of course Amanda was there. My brothers and the little cousins played basketball outside. I joined them for a while but I stopped after I realized how much I suck at it. Noah, who is six, is a really good player, and made lots of baskets.
Daniel, since he goes to Columbia, left with Grandma and Grandpa. Amanda, my aunt Liz's family, and my mothers cousins departed, in that order. And, of course, I did too, and just managed to catch my scheduled train back here. I am wondering whether or not I should go home for Passover two weeks from now. I'll have all my thesis stuff finished by then. But I'll consider that question later.
I have only one major complaint (besides my evil high-heeled shoes), and that is concerned with a certain snobbish woman to whom I have the misfortune of being related by marriage. She's married to my father's youngest brother, and comes from a very rich family in Scarsdale. For those of you who didn't grow up in the New York metropolitan area, Scarsdale is in the NYC suburbs. So is Larchmont, where my father's parents live, and New Rochelle, where we used to live before we moved to Maryland. Anyway, this woman seemed nice enough when we first met her before she and my uncle got married, but since then - and especially since having kids - she seems to go out of her way to avoid my uncle's side of the family. I suppose she thinks it's beneath her to interact with anyone whose net household income totals less than half a million dollars a year. A slightly more charitable explanation of her behavior is that she's too absorbed in her own local world to care about anything outside it. My uncle, sadly enough, has just about let her cut him off from the rest of his family, which includes us.
In spite of my grandmother's insistence on the importance of my little brother's Bar Mitzvah, and my father's less forceful but frequent reminders aimed at getting him to come and bring the family along, he did not manage to get his wife and their little son (who I haven't seen except in pictures) to come. He visited with his daughter, a very sweet little girl who will probably be ruined by her mother. He only stayed for part of the party because he wanted to catch an early train back home. His wife, he said, was sick. I don't understand why my littlest cousin had to stay home with her. My uncle could handle him for an overnight trip. Mom speculates that they probably had an engagement with some classier people the next day and didn't want to take the trouble to come.
As far as I was concerned, my aunt's presence or absence didn't matter one way or the other. Unlike my mother's parents, who unfortunately weren't able to make it because they really are in bad health, her presence wouldn't be missed much. Except Mom had signed her up to open the Ark during the service along with my uncle, and said she'd get a real kick out of making my decidedly non-religious aunt actually do something Jewish.[2] She also hired one of Martina's friends (Martina is Benjamin's nanny) to take care of her son when they came, so my aunt would have no excuse not to participate.[3] Naturally Mom is upset. My grandparents were pretty upset too.
My aunt Liz and uncle Wayne managed to come from Colorado with their sons Wyatt and Noah, whose extreme rambunctiousness (even for young boys) and food allergies make traveling all the more complicated. My former nanny, Amanda, came all the way from Chicago even though it would put her way behind on her studying.[4] Other friends and relatives were able to come in from much, much further away than Scarsdale, which is a four-hour train ride from Maryland. My aunt should have been courteous enough to attend something this important, my uncle should have stood up to her, brought his son along and stayed for the whole party, and he shouldn't have acted like he was trapped in a room listening to a seminar on the finer points of tax law the whole time. He used to be really cool, like the way my brother Daniel is now except minus the off-color sense of humor. At least his daughter enjoyed herself. She played around a lot with Benjamin and my cousins from Colorado and didn't want to leave the party early.
Next time I plan to visit New York, I'm going to ask my grandparents to arrange something so I can see my little cousins and my uncle. They should remind him that I haven't seen the younger one at all. Although his crypto-shiksa wife may make him worm out of it at the last minute the way she usually does.
Now, I have about five hundred e-mails to clear out of my mailbox. That's what I get for signing on to the Bryn Mawr alumni listserve.
[1] I love my brother. I think he and
drakonous would get along famously. I'll have to see if I can introduce them when Daniel comes to visit me in Philadelphia, which he's going to do whether he likes it or not.[2] She is Jewish, by the way, but doesn't give a damn. Her daughter doesn't go to Hebrew school and she had her son just get a hospital circumcision instead of a real bris. Even for a pretty non-observant person like myself, that's a shocking dereliction of duty, and it's even worse that my uncle didn't insist on it, since he grew up in a moderately Conservative family. If he'd been my mother's brother he would probably have been disowned.
[3] Our would-be babysitter ended up just shooting the breeze with Martina for most of the time and refused to accept payment, even though it was offered.
[4] Amanda has spent much of her adult life as a nanny. She's an extremely good one because of her natural talent with and love for children. Now she's studying to become an accredited teacher.