Let the Thanking Begin

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How much do I have to be thankful for as we approach Thanskgiving week, the week after my son’s Bar Mitzvah? First, I’m thankful for my husband for creating an excel spreadsheet to track it all, among other things.

After weeks of not sleeping well, with millions of details running around in my head, I gave my permission this week to sleep in a bit. To become somewhat of a slacker. To laze in bed after the kids went off to school to read. To read chapters in The Hunger Games, a book my kids have been begging me to finish already after starting it two months ago. To read A Legacy of Madness, a memoir written by a college friend and forever mentor, who edited nearly everything I wrote at the college paper at Rutgers.

In this way, I made a little room to thank myself for getting through a blessed and wonderful weekend that was Nathan’s Bar Mitzvah.

Next week is Thankgiving, where we will thank everyone else.

• For friends and family for driving north and south, for flying  east, to be with us in Rochester.
• For friends, who helped us prepare the gift bags for our out of town guests.
• For friends who are more like sisters who helped serve dinner on Friday night.
• For friends and family who read Torah, who learned an aliyah or took a reading during the service.
• For nieces and nephews who gave out candy, and then ate the candy, after we showered Nathan with sweets.
• For our synagogue’s rabbis, chazzan and teachers, for preparing my son with all he needed to know as he became a Bar Mitzvah
• My mother-in-law for knitting almost 100 kippot in Mets colors for the Saturday morning service
• Mom, for making cookies and her famous mandelbrodt for the sunday brunch, and friends for making the eggs, fruit salad, cake, that everyone wants the recipes
• The staff at the JCC for putting on a seamless party

Now that Nathan is a man (see above), it will be his turn to say thank you all for making his day so meaningful. And he’s going to thank you the old fashioned way, with a card to soon be apppearing in your mailbox.

Happy Thanksgiving!