Growing Boy

For about a year now, I've served one main purpose in Bar Mitzvahzilla's life: I am his yardstick. He walks up to me each day, assesses my height, and then tries to get me to stand back to back with him in front of a mirror so he can see if he's taller than me.

Since I've actually been shrinking while he's been growing, this is kind of a win/win situation for him. What could be better than having a really old mom whose bones have been eaten away by all of her asthma medications? My last bone density scan was so alarming that my doctor had to put me on 7000 units of Vitamin D per day and a bone density medication once a week, and I'm only 49. At this rate, what will I look like at 59? All I know is that each day when I get up I'm not sure whether all my vertebrae will simply slide down my spinal cord and pool at my feet.

But Bar Mitzvahzilla is a strapping, healthy young man. If I judge him by the size of his feet or hands, I'd say he's going to be a veritable Jewish giant - which means he'll be over 5'8". He's happy about this. He's still at the age where he wants to be older and bigger than everyone else. Of course, he also really likes having two fangs growing in his mouth, so his opinion is pretty unreliable.

To get bigger, Bar Mitzvahzilla is eating a lot of food. I had heard this was going to happen but I don't think I understood the sheer magnitude of it, that feeding my son would end up being the bane of my existence.

Since I am the village idiot when it comes to cooking or feeding my family, always found wandering aimlessly in my kitchen, trying to scrub out a spot on the counter that's actually part of the granite design, I'm not exactly suited for this job of growing a child. When I get him home from school I'm as ready as I'm ever going to be to prepare some kind of slap dash dinner. I manage to prepare something and then he is full. After dinner's done, amazed at my kitchen prowess, I collapse on my bed only to hear, one hour later, the call: he's hungry again. He needs dinner number two. And an hour after that? Dinner number three. It's actually impossible for me to think of three original, interesting things to make for dinner all on the same night. To me, three ideas should equal three days of dinner out of the way forever.

Bar Mitzvahzilla, on the other hand, has got a pretty indiscriminate appetite. Basically, he'll eat anything that's not a vegetable. If it has picante sauce on it, that's really good. If it's a la mode - good too. If told to make his own dinner, he will make salsa and chips.

I won't even get into the sheer logistics of trying to sit down and enjoy a meal at the same table with him - his meaty paws grabbing all the food before anyone can get their hands on it, him watching us for a lull in our eating to ask if we're going to finish our food - and if we're not, can he have it? The mad scramble as he tries to eat everything on his plate at once, till food is scattered everywhere - crumbs on the floor, his shirt splattered, food in his hair.

And when he's full, he's so done that it's like he was never hungry at all. He looks up from his plate and doesn't know what we're all staring at. He stands up, pushes his chair back till it hits the wall, and stalks away from the table, leaving his plate.