Just a Few Words

I need to be writing a speech right now. Speech writing is a first for me, as will be the speech giving that follows it. The subject is one I know well: my daughter. The occasion? Her bat mitzvah, a mere month away. My daughter, E, also has to give a speech, one which she is already finished writing, by the way, as if she has lots of free time to be writing speeches, in between her Hebrew tutoring and seventh grade homework and guitar and piano lessons and ridiculous amounts of texting. Then again, she had the guidance of the rabbi, a man who gives speeches weekly. Me, I got nothing.

Well, that’s not entirely true. What I have is twelve and a half years’ of memories of my daughter, and one strict admonition: don’t say anything that will embarrass me, Mom.  Don’t say anything inappropriate, Mom. You have to say this in front of the rabbi and my friends and my grandfather, Mom. Don’t scar me for life, Mom. It’s not that I want to say the wrong thing, it’s that I can’t help myself. It’s my super power.

When I sit down to begin my speech, I think about all the wonderful things about my kid. Then I think of the stories to illustrate it. Then I just think of stories. All the hysterical things she has said or done over the years, a small lifetime of inappropriate anecdotes. I can’t tell any of those on her big day, in front of everyone she knows, all those people who have come to show their love and support as she becomes an adult, responsible for her own actions, her deeds and her words. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with me; I never had a bat mitzvah, and look at how I turned out.

Once, a long time ago, during the start of the whole Catholic Church pedophile scandals, I was at an art show for a good friend of my husband’s. I didn’t really know many people at the show, but fortified with a glass of wine, I began making small talk with some other people who were friends with my husband’s friend. We went from subject to subject, you know how you do at a party, where one person tells a story which reminds you of a story, and then your story reminds them of another funnier story, and it becomes this Jenga game of top that stories that eventually has to crash.

Tthere I was, talking to these people, and they told a slightly risqué but funny story that involved sex and religion. It reminded me of a similar but more horrible one that I read in the paper, so I told them about it. A priest had molested an altar boy by convincing him that fellatio was a form of the Holy Communion. When I got to that part, which I consider the punch line, the entire room went quiet.  It was like something out of a movie, where time stands still. My words hung in the air for all to see, to remember, to imprint on their minds, until they evaporated into the ether. The couple with whom I was speaking looked at me like I took a dump in front of them, not just any dump, but a dump on the baby Jesus. Turns out they are Catholic. Go figure.

E doesn’t know that story, but she’s been around me enough to know that she should be a little concerned about what might come out of my mouth. Plus, I’ve got the goods on her. With that kind of power comes great responsibility. How am I supposed to write anything about my child and not tell a single story involving a body function or a bad mood? Am I capable of relating a story that doesn’t somehow contain sexual innuendo? She’s an adult now, according to Jewish tradition, so none of it is lost on her, and if you don’t believe me, just say balls or nuts in front of her, for any reason at all, and you tell me if she doesn’t laugh. She hasn’t ever seen any, yet instinctively, she knows to laugh at them.

So I’m stuck. I have lots I can say about this marvelous child of mine, but keeping it clean? I just don’t know. I’m much better at keeping it real. And by real, I mean really wrong.