I have been worrying about this for 13 years

When my son was born almost 13 years ago I started to worry about his Bar Mitzvah.

While the Bar Mitzvah may be a rite of passage for the Jewish boy who becomes a “man” on the occasion of his Bar Mitzvah it is the rite of a Jewish mother to worry and it’s something that I took to rather like a duck takes to water as soon as it’s born. As soon as he was born I started to worry about his thirteenth birthday.

Strange as it may seem to people that know me, it’s not the idea of Little Pencil becoming a man that has been driving this 13 year worry. It’s not him singing his portion in synagogue in Hebrew in front of 200 people that fills me with apprehension, I’ll leave that to him to worry about. It not even the actual function that is worrying me, in fact that is pretty well organised and it’s going to be amazing. What has worried me all these years is photographs.

I’m not sure if it is actually customary or it is something that I saw at someone else’s function and decided to worry about, but I plan to have a slide show featuring snapshots of his life running in the background on the night of his party.

And therein lies the problem.

I spent at least the first three years of Little Pencil’s life behind a camera. A proper camera not an iPhone. I have albums full of photos of him, CDs with images, and as he got older and we got better at technology, we started to build literally gigabytes worth of photos of him on every electrical device we own.

Now I have to go through a billion photos of him and choose which ones I want to show to represent his life to our family and friends on this important night. I am overflowing with bias. I think that every single photo of him is beautiful, important and highly significant.
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The part of me that I don’t normally verbalise would like the night’s activities to include a pop quiz on Little Pencil’s life – that is how closely I want people to look at his gorgeous pictures but I am well aware that these are the ramblings of an over-the-top Jewish mother. In truth I know that no one will actually look at or focus on the pictures, except perhaps his grandparents because I will tell them that they have to.

But what if someone glances over and doesn’t see how tiny he was at birth, how bloody cute he was when he was a baby, how he learned to ride a bike or a horse? How he used to make a Popeye face and how he loved to dress up? What if no one sees how he used to throw his head back when he laughed and how he loved to listen to his dad tell stories? What if they miss seeing him play (and sleep) with his dog, if they miss his first soccer match or his grading to black belt in Tae Kwondo? What if they miss the days at the beach or the swings in the park or the holidays where he has explored with wide eyed wonder? What if they don’t see the love in his eyes when he is with his cousins or the joy that emanates from deep within when he is surrounded by his friends? What if they don’t see how his face lights up just like his father’s when the two of them are playing?

I suppose I could force them to come to my home for 2 days without sleep and toilet breaks and go through all our pictures. But people tell me that may come across as weird.

I guess they will just have to see the beauty within him on the day.

But, just in case, I have selected 724 of my favourite photos to show. And the good news is that I only have three more years of his life to go through to get to the current day. I promise there will be NO POWERPOINT they will only be on display in the background.  The forced viewing has been vetoed.

With apologies to everyone who has been invited to the Bar Mitzvah.