After a long absence, BarMitzvahzilla returns

When you name a blog something as event-specific as mine, Bar Mitzvahzilla, it kind of has a beginning and an end to it. The beginning was the time period when my son was tormenting me, not studying his Torah portion, not writing his speech, refusing to go shopping for suits, for shoes - you know, just being 12. And then the end was the Bar Mitzvah and his party that evening. So it ended and the blog ended.

But tonight I found out in my new Mothers Who Write class that I should be blogging. And while we were talking about this I realized that, being a lifelong journal-keeper, I missed blogging. So here I am again. I'm keeping the name since it's kind of applicable since I'm living in Post-Bar Mitzvahzillaland. I'm also living in a kind of Pre-Bat Mitzvahzillaland, since in about 3 1/2 years my daughter will be there too. Might as well start blogging now.

Here's what's happened to Bar Mitzvahzilla since the event six months ago:

1) He's grown about 4 inches. I'm a giantess of a Jewish woman - by which I mean I am 5'5 - and he's almost as tall as me.
2) He still believes soap and water are optional for bathing and contraindicated for his face.
3) He is still reading a book a day, like 300 pages. Who'd he get that from?
4) When he's in a snotty, adolescent mood, which is just about every day, he can say some of the meanest things imaginable. Sometimes it's not what he says, it's the huffing and the puffing and the muttering under his breath, his uncanny ability to call me on everything I say and do, and to somehow find fraud in everything I am. He watches me closely, like a spy.
5) Since I'm still the source of all good things that happen to him (the spender in the family, I'm the one who buys him all those books!) I know I can win this ware. I refuse to give in. I go with the excellent advice of my best friend, a mother of a 24-year-old, "Don't let him get away with anything."

And just in case you have a bad impression of Bar Mitzvahzilla, I just want you to know that his bad behavior is only half the time. The other half of the time he is the darling boy I've raised: affectionate, funny, kind, and honest. I'm determined that we'll exorcise that other boy - that weird stranger - and my boy will be there, waiting for me, whole, when he's eighteen and ready to go to college. If I live.