I sit in the empty sanctuary as you practice your Torah portion with the rabbi. You begin chanting in your new voice, that voice that has dropped octaves in the last six months. You can’t quite find your comfort zone with this new instrument.
That voice is a man’s voice, but how can that be? Your thirteenth birthday is days away, and you have one size nine foot in childhood and the other in adulthood. Your first pair of shoes are hanging off a shelf above your bed, and I glance at them sometimes as I kiss you good night. They are such impossibly tiny shoes, for pudgy baby feet that couldn’t wait to explore the world. Now those feet are long and lean and usually smelly, and your shoes cost more than mine.
You finish reading one portion, and you catch my eye and grin. That’s my baby, the boy who always has a smile to flash or a hug to give. When we hug now, we are head to head, and I am officially the shortest member of our family. Yet I easily outweigh you; your early adolescent frame is all angles and bones. While your sister jokes about your arms looking incredibly long, I am remembering when your entire body was shorter than one lanky limb.
The rabbi sits down to listen, and you are alone on the bimah.* You look so small up there, yet you are a presence. You exhale and sigh; I can tell that this reading is a challenge for you. You will practice more at home, because you want to succeed. You have discovered over the past year that educators and other adults expect more from you as you get older, and you’ve resisted. Algebra and debate team just aren’t as fun as basketball and building forts with your friends. I’m torn between shielding you from the pressures of adolescence and preparing you for the rigors you’ll face in high school.
As you wrap up your lesson, I look around the sanctuary, envisioning it filled with family and friends on the day you become a Bar Mitzvah. I remember sitting in those pews holding you in my arms, and trying to keep you and your three year old sister occupied and quiet during services. In a few weeks I will stand beside you on the bimah, reciting the parents’ blessing over you as you become a Jewish adult.
You stride through the parking lot and hop into the passenger seat, enjoying the newly earned view from the front. The reticent and soft-spoken young man standing in the sanctuary is gone, and my self-assured and goofy boy chats with me as I navigate the windy roads home. You switch the radio station, and sing along to a song I’ve never heard. When did you learn that? I am struck by the fact that you no longer have all your new experiences with Dad or me. Such a significant part of your life is spent without us, but I remember when Mommy and Daddy were the center of your existence.
A few days pass, and I’m sitting at the kitchen table alone while you listen to music in the next room. You take off your head phones and sidle up behind me.
“Can I have a hug?” you ask, brown eyes smiling. Those eyes haven’t changed; I see all thirteen of your years in their depths.
Maybe when you are a parent you will realize how sweet those words are to hear, perhaps even sweeter than that very first word you said over twelve years ago.
“Of course you can,” I answer you, wrapping my arms around your almost-teenage shoulders and drawing you close. “You can always have a hug.”
Always, my baby.
*the elevated platform in a synagogue at which the reading of the Torah takes place
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