Birthdays, Bar Mitzvahs, and Bat Mitzvahs stand out across time, each reflecting life as it was then, feeling so permanent in the moment yet always changing. The shifts that blurred across the days, weeks, and years now look so clear in retrospect.
As I recall them here, they tumble one into the other, each representing their own sort of joy even in the midst of heartache.
The first birthday party I remember I was six years old. My father was making a 30th birthday party for my mother; he was thirty-two. I remember thinking how old they were. My parents had a terrible marriage but I would like to believe that, at least once, she was grateful and happy and expressed those feelings to my father, who was always trying to please her. Eventually, of course, he stopped trying to please and just left.
The next birthday I remember was my brother Marvin’s. It was his Bar Mitzvah. At thirteen, he was already grown, tall, handsome, and already shaving. He had those good-looking Hollywood playboy looks. The ritual and the party afterwards were symbols of the culture we were part of rather than any deep religious significance. Marvin was a boy, their first boy, and something to be joyous about. I was five and my sister four when Marvin was born, and I still remember my father calling everyone and shouting, “It’s a boy, it’s a boy. Finally, we have a boy.”
Only girls attended my sweet sixteen birthday party. I sometimes get it confused with my bridal shower; one of them was at Tavern on the Green in New York. I was chubby then and not very joyful about anything. I was anything but sweet, good, yes, but definitely not sweet.
And then there were all the yearly parties for my children, Marian, Stephen and Beth. There were those endless parties in the living room. Once I hired a teenage clown. There were story telling parties and scavenger hunts. We even had parties at a local park with barbecues and baseball for Steve. If we were lucky enough to avoid a party, we would take one or two friends of the birthday child to some special event instead.
When my youngest, Beth, was about five, the neighbor across the street had a party for her five year old. She invited everyone on the block except Beth. The next summer I invited her daughter to Beth’s party and she felt very uncomfortable and guilty, at least that is what she expressed to another neighbor. Good, that was just what I wanted to happen.
Then came those surprise parties my friends and I made for each of our forty-year old husbands. I thought the one I made for Charly was very successful. But, shortly after the party, he asked me for a divorce. The same thing happened to quite a few of my friends who had similar parties for their husbands’ fortieth birthdays. From then on, we advised everyone we knew who was contemplating such a party against it. We warned people that those parties were the kiss of death and were a prelude to middle age angst.
Marian was Bat Mitzvah and Steve Bah Mitzvah in the same synagogue a year apart. We were divorced by then and all I could afford was a party afterwards in my home. Charly forbade any of his family from coming. We kept a stiff upper lip about it all but it surely was a symbol of the legacy of divorce and very sad.
By the time Beth was sweet sixteen, Charly was remarried and living in a lavish home in a neighboring community. He planned a formal party for Beth at his house. Beth and I had so much fun buying her first formal dress. And he was gracious, he invited us all, some of my friends, and even my mother and her second husband. As soon as I walked into the house Charly told me how many bedrooms and bathrooms his grand new house had. It was big, but very tacky. He had no idea how I might feel seeing this house while I received hardly any alimony and child support. The neighbors complained about the music from the live band and the dancing had to stop. Later that night, Beth and most of her friends and Charley’s stepsons ended up on my living room floor spending the night.
My birthday, November 26th, always falls sometime on the Thanksgiving weekend and everyone came home no matter where they lived. When I was sixty, my children made me a surprise birthday party. I can still feel how stunned I was at one Thanksgiving when I opened the card to find the picture of a computer. What I appreciated was their image of me. So many of the people I know are snow birds, or blue birds, or goofy birds. But my children think of me as this busy person uncovering new worlds via the internet and wide world web which is a gift in itself.
Another time, my family gave me an expensive music system. My family surprised me with a party when I was sixty, gave me a new computer when I was seventy, and a music system when I was seventy-five. I could hardly wait for what I would get when I became eighty. Perhaps they would think of a new car, an airplane, who knows what.
Rhoada Wald 