Almost ready....
Today our family attended the lavish Bat Mitzvah of my oldest daughter's 13-year-old best friend. During the moving ceremony, the rabbi counseled the young lady - whom, we all knew, and he announced, he'd known her whole life - that she was now considered (religiously) an adult.
I flashed back to the "Aleph" ("A," or beginning) Hebrew School class; my daughter doesn't practice Judaism, but the rabbi every year does a public Shabbot dinner with the schoolkids; the first year we went, he was stunned to see my daughter reciting the prayers with more confidence than his own students.
The temple, too, was where my daughters and my daughter's friend attended preschool; the teens and the teens-to-be, as they waited with me (I was the "volunteer" chaperone for the rented school bus to transport the kids to the banquet hall) were giddy and hyper with excitement.
They started rolling down the familiar, grassy mound near the school, to work off some of their nervous energy.
I watched them, and honestly, if today had been a television show, the focus would have gone soft, cheesy music would have started playing, and all the kids would have shrunk to their 3-year-old selves.
Because that's EXACTLY what they used to do when they attended the preschool - whose windows looked out on that same hill.
We moms would gather, chat, commiserate, and set up play dates while we let our post-toddlers work off their just-out-of-school energy on that self-same hill, before buckling them into our respective vans, right on the same sidewalk where I stood today.
Now, here they were, being called adults.
In so many ways, they are approaching adulthood. So many things I have yet to do to get them ready for that, still. In so many ways, though, they are still children, rolling down hills.
The funniest thing: after all that lavish celebration, the walking around all day in a little black dress and heels, doing the grownup chaperone thing, I sort of wanted to roll down that grassy hill myself.
So: I guess it's all good. We all need to balance the kid and the adult in us, no matter how old we get.
I flashed back to the "Aleph" ("A," or beginning) Hebrew School class; my daughter doesn't practice Judaism, but the rabbi every year does a public Shabbot dinner with the schoolkids; the first year we went, he was stunned to see my daughter reciting the prayers with more confidence than his own students.
The temple, too, was where my daughters and my daughter's friend attended preschool; the teens and the teens-to-be, as they waited with me (I was the "volunteer" chaperone for the rented school bus to transport the kids to the banquet hall) were giddy and hyper with excitement.
They started rolling down the familiar, grassy mound near the school, to work off some of their nervous energy.
I watched them, and honestly, if today had been a television show, the focus would have gone soft, cheesy music would have started playing, and all the kids would have shrunk to their 3-year-old selves.
Because that's EXACTLY what they used to do when they attended the preschool - whose windows looked out on that same hill.
We moms would gather, chat, commiserate, and set up play dates while we let our post-toddlers work off their just-out-of-school energy on that self-same hill, before buckling them into our respective vans, right on the same sidewalk where I stood today.
Now, here they were, being called adults.
In so many ways, they are approaching adulthood. So many things I have yet to do to get them ready for that, still. In so many ways, though, they are still children, rolling down hills.
The funniest thing: after all that lavish celebration, the walking around all day in a little black dress and heels, doing the grownup chaperone thing, I sort of wanted to roll down that grassy hill myself.
So: I guess it's all good. We all need to balance the kid and the adult in us, no matter how old we get.
Tags: adult, bat, celebration, challenge, child, growth, kid, mitzvah, preschool, teen
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