Bat Mitzvahzilla Coming Up Fast

Daughter is turning 10 on Wednesday. This makes her, besides the all-important Double Digits, three years away from her Bat Mitzvah. She's already started telling me her preferences for her party just so that I, who apparently don't have anything better to do than spend three years planning her Bat Mitzvah, can get a head start.

Of course she wants the party to be wonderful like her brother's, where we invited everyone who we loved - and their kids - and watched everyone we adored adore each other in turn. Of course, she knows it's about the synagogue service, about starting to be responsible as an adult Jew for her religious observance. Of course, Mom! But, one little thing: can the tables on the kid side of the banquet room be arranged in a huge "R" for the first letter of her name?

I look at my budding Bat Mitzvahzilla and I tell her, "I just want you to know that I'm not changing the name of the blog, even when you say really nutty things like that."

She continues as if she hasn't heard me. "And what about huge glittery posters of my name on the wall all over the room?" I think in about a minute she'll ask me if I'm taking notes.

Planning my son's Bar Mitzvah party was pretty easy. All I had to do was avoid the horrors of every Bar and Bat Mitzvah party I went to in Skokie in the early 70s. First there were the stilted tables of 13-year-olds watching the grown-ups foxtrot. Then, when it was our time to dance -cued by the Mod music- there were the girls plastered against one wall and the boys, like one paralyzed massive iceberg, plastered against the other.

My definition of a good time was pretty loose back then. Running around the room or playing on the hotel elevator was good. Gossiping about the boys was good. Seeing a boy walk toward me as if to ask me to dance, but then chicken out, was good because then I could talk about that and micro-analyze it all night with the other girls who almost got asked to dance.

So, between what we did for Bar Mitzvahzilla's party and what I remember from when I was a kid, I figure I can handle this. I tell Daughter we'll have to talk about it when she's twelve. But she's pretty organized. She'll probably start a list now so she'll be ready.