Bat Mitzvah miracles

I like to play to my strengths. Who doesn't? I'm good at a number of things, and after a cup of coffee, I might be able think of a couple. What I do know, even with nothing more stimulating than morning tea, is that event planning is not one of my particular areas of expertise. Still, organizing my daughter's bat mitzvah should have been pretty straightforward after the experience I had gained from celebrating her two elder brothers' passages into ritual adulthood.  Those went smoothly, didn't they?

I poured coffee. My memory stirred.

Oh, right.

They were both beautiful events. With glitches. The first one, five years ago, mere months after our moving to Canada, involved a very steep learning curve just to cope with the basics: invitations, a venue, an officiant. The seating plan for dinner was very nearly the death of me. One brother-in-law was a no-show due to an expired passport plus an international border between  California and Canada. We missed him for himself and also for his upper-body strength, as he was meant to be 'hagba', the one who lifts the Torah scroll and pirouettes prettily in front of the congregation.  Luckily, our friend David from England agreed to step in. It was tricky due to the time of year and consequently unequal weights of the two parts of the scroll. Suffice it to say disaster was narrowly avoided. (And if David has taken to doing one-armed press-ups in recent years, that may be why.)

At next son's bar mitzvah, we had some knowledge and experience under our belts. However, husband's aunt, who had come from England for the event, fell and broke her hip the day before the ceremony, which was truly terrible. She spent the next day, in fact the next week, in hospital in Toronto, undergoing surgery (eventually). Fortunately, very fortunately, my father-in-law, brother of said great-aunt, had reminded her to take out travel insurance before embarking on the trip. "Oh, I won't need that," aunt said blithely. Father-in-law, a former solicitor, said firmly, "Do it." So, while our son's great-aunt missed the event she had flown to attend, and (like many) has never really recovered from the fracture and its consequences, at least her expenses were paid. These included a stretch limo to the airport and an upgrade to first class for great-aunt and for one companion (mother-in-law, as it turned out; father-in-law got left back in economy).

So now it's daughter's bat mitzvah. We thought: third time lucky. Surely, we had earned the right to some smooth sailing.

We thought wrong.

On top of all the usual kerfuffle, the things we had actually learned from experience, like deciding honours and other ceremonial issues, the iniquitous seating charts and centre-pieces, we faced completely new and unpredictable challenges. First amongst them: a month beforehand, the fridge broke down and could not be fixed by either of two repairmen. Once its death warrant had been signed, we ordered a new one. "Oh, that's a great choice. It will be here in two weeks," said Denis, at the large, highly-recommended appliance store we chose. Two weeks seemed long. I wondered whether they grew the refrigerators from seed, or harvested parts from fields in Saskatchewan, or Szechuan, and then assembled them by hand, like a jigsaw puzzle. But two weeks gave us just enough time before the out-of-town family and friends arrived. In the meantime, we borrowed a cooler and bought many bags of ice.

After two weeks, sure enough, Denis called us. "Good news! Your fridge is here!" Three days to D-Day. Whew.

"Great!" I said. "Bring it by."

"Oh, no," said Denis. "We don't have any delivery spots until next week."

I muted the phone against the sound of head-banging. "Denis," I said, calmly, at least at first. "I explained this to you. I need a working fridge in my kitchen and I need it before Friday."

To make the excruciatingly long story short(er), in the end, Denis's distribution manager and I had a pleasant chat in which he agreed to deliver the item on Thursday in exchange for a good review online, a result which (further) undermines my faith in reviews.

I made plans to be home Thursday morning. Unfortunately, at that exact time I found myself in the emergency room of our local hospital, a place one never really wants to be, but in particular, not two days before one's daughter's bat mitzvah. Husband escorted me there at 4 a.m., but had to abandon me in a cubicle awaiting my fate sevreal hours later. while he rushed home to take delivery of the fridge. Ananda, our true and wonderful friend who came all the way from London in order to work like a skivvy for week leading up to the bat mitzvah, helped with the shifting of furniture required to get the old appliance out and the new one in. (She helped with so much else too.)

I underwent various unpleasant diagnostic procedures and sat waiting to hear my fate. Meanwhile, my father called me from Los Angeles. Odd, I thought, since he was meant to be on a plane heading for Toronto.

"How are you?" I asked, trying to sound cheerful and to mask the noise of medical machinery and human woe in the background.

"I'm not doing very well," he said, tremulously, and my heart lurched. "I've lost my passport."

How he lost the passport remains exceedingly unclear. In brief, it was there, on his dresser, and then it wasn't. The number of suspects is limited and, all things considered, best if we never identify the culprit. My mother decided to ditch my dad and was at that moment on her way to the airport; at least one of them would attend their youngest grandchild's bat mitzvah. My poor father! He loves his family and hates to miss out on events.  I looked at my watch. We still had almost 48 hours till the ceremony. Sisters, nieces and nephew, my mother and I went into high gear and with everyone pulling together, including my father himself, an airport car-service, and eventually an Uber driver named Emma, accompanied by at least fifty phone calls, three cancelled and re-booked reservations, and a hundred-odd text messages, he made the last possible flight from LA to Toronto: the red-eye. At 2:00 am in Toronto, 11:00 pm at LAX, he and I texted back and forth: "It looks foggy." "Still on schedule." His plane landed promptly the next morning, and he walked into the shul just as the Torah service started. In spite of having agreed, days earlier, to the rabbi's request that we keep the family reunions in the aisle to a minimum, this one, we said, had to be an exception. (Our gracious rabbi understood.)  And it was indeed exceptional. With tears and with joy, we settled to watch my thirteen-year-old daughter become an adult. She did so with grace, aplomb, maturity and beauty. She was perfect.

Afterward, at the party, our daughter and her friends danced and jumped around and dressed up in silly wigs. They spun in circles, competing to see who could hold their arms out the longest, then collapsed in laughter. They raided the candy buffet with abandon, aiming in particular to acquire ring-pops. Perhaps the bat mitzvah girl is not quite an adult yet-- and thank goodness. Baby steps, for her and for me.

And oh yes, my diagnosis. The doctor eventually appeared and said, "It's the best possible outcome you could hope for with these symptoms." It has a multi-syllabic Greek name that took me longer to learn than the chanting I had to do in Hebrew, but the end result was a prescription for watchful waiting. I watched, and waited, and I'm fine. And so was the whole bat mitzvah weekend-- week really-- in fact it was more than fine. It was beautiful. Some very special Toronto friends pitched in to help when it seemed everything was about to collapse, and they made me realize how entrenched we are in a wonderful community, which is a pretty lovely thing to realize.

We were reminded (not that we needed it) of our amazing friends and family who don't live in Toronto, too. To square the circle, Yael, David's wife, played the role of 'hagba', five years after her husband's heroic act. She had it easy, though: at this time of year, the Torah is evenly distributed across its two spindles. (Plus Yael goes to the gym.)

So, our last bar/t mitzvah, and now it's all over! Just the thank-you notes and the photo album to organize, and, of course, that review of the refrigerator to post. Let's see.  "I love it, I adore it, I am crazy about it."

You can take that to the bank.