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A Womans Work: My simchah is in crisis - get me a celebrity

My son is barmitzvah this year and — assuming I get my act together — it is happening in January.

September 13, 2012 10:23

By

Keren David,

Keren David

3 min read

This is it. New Year is upon me. I can deny it no longer. My son is barmitzvah this year and — assuming I get my act together — it is happening in January.

Some women morph from Bride-zilla to Barm-mum-zilla the day they give birth. They book the date, venue and band as soon as their princelet starts primary school. They then obsessively change the details every six months or so for the next eight years, according to fashion and whim. The key is to be completely different from everyone else, while also being the same. It’s a fine art, and one that I cannot be bothered to master.

Of course, barmitzvah planning is not just for the mother. In some households the dad takes an equally active role. Evenings are spent table-planning, or creating a website charting every stage of the boy’s life so far. My husband is not like this. His role, thus far, is to assure me that I getting much too anxious about the whole thing and assert that when he was growing up in 1970s Prestwich, barmitzvahs were planned and prepared for in six weeks. I am sure this cannot be true, but then Manchester is a different story, as I often point out to him, especially when reading Howard Jacobson.

I have bursts of remembering that a barmitzvah is happening, vaguely murmuring: “I must do something about it”, checking the bank balance, shuddering, and then forgetting about it again. Occasionally I do something — book the shul, organise barmitzvah lessons, find a caterer — and then sink back into happy
barm-livion again, secure in the knowledge that we’ve got months.