My First Bat Mitzvah: Part 1
When I was 15 I got invited to a bat mitzvah in State College, PA. I had
been kicked out of high school and was rather aimless in between
volunteering for NARAL where the highlight of my work was not studying
election district maps, but secretly taping a right-to-life rally at the
capitol, and taking a highly embarrassing human sexuality class at the
community college (which I didn't pass). So, I begged my dad for money
to buy a $99 Trailways bus ticket and called to tell my friend and her
rather unhappy mom that I was coming. Apparently, as I figured out far later, the etiquette when receiving an across-the-country invitation was to send a gift, not take the bus across country and show up on the family's doorstep.
I didn't know from bat mitvahs or anything Jewish really. I didn't
realize I was Jewish until I was about 11, the summer the same friends
lived in the family student housing at the UofO where my mom was in
school. Thinking back on it, they were probably Sephardic Jews, but this
was a subtlety I didn't understand until much later in life, after I
went through my obsessive Holocaust phase in college, reading everything
I could get my hands on and pouring over the graphic novel Maus.
It was the summer we all lived in student housing in the mid-1970s that I
first remember going to temple. The rabbi was liberal and the temple
was welcoming to me, my mom and my loud band of rogue brothers. They let me open the ark and approach the Bima, something l was not allowed to do
when my father became Bar Mitzvah on his 61st birthday at his
conservative synagogue which didn't recognize me as a Jew. But then,
neither did he.
I yearned for order and religion as a teenager. I wanted something to
hang on to. My aunt's guru drew me in, but I wasn't allowed to be
initiated as a follower until I was 21, and by that time, I had come out
as a lesbian and feminist with some grasp of the problem of colonialism
and could hardly imagine following a man from a different country in a
religion that was not my own.
It seemed like the right thing to go across the country on the bus. Four
days and four nights - through Eastern Oregon, Idaho, Colorado and the
rest of the Northern route to Pennsylvania, land of the Amish and, as I
realize now, Joe Paterno. I had a friend french braid my long brown hair
and I wore my prized Manhattan Transfer "Mecca for Moderns" concert
t-shirt. Plus my regulation drawstring balloon pants and flat Chinese
slippers. I brought tapes to listen to in my Walkman with the
over-the-head earphones: Soft Cell, Manhattan Transfer, Berlin and Bruce
Springsteen.
I found Salt Lake City to be truly strange. I didn't know much about
Mormons but I found anyone who was hyper religious and conservative to
be both fascinating and somewhat horrifying. I wanted to go into their
giant white temple, but found out I wasn't allowed. Being Jewish,
however, had nothing to do with it.
My bus arrived in Chicago at midnight. The bus station was urban,
located under giant freeway overpasses that made it seem even darker
than it was in the wee hours of the morning. I spent my time sitting in a
plastic bucket seat with a tiny attached black and white TV, trying to
get reception and keep it going with quarters in the dirty slot next to
my hand.
Somewhere between one flat state and another, I sat next to an old woman
with a red wig and bright blue eyeshadow. She wore gold chains and a
huge watch on her tiny, wrinkled frame. As she clutched her leatherette
purse next to me and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief, she told me
about her life as a rich lady in the glamorous location of Garden City,
Long Island. She said she had a lot of money but liked to take the bus
to see "how the people lived." I didn't quite believe her, but on the
other hand, couldn't figure out why she'd be lying to me.
We sat in the front, to the right of the driver, the seats right next to
the barrier above the stairs facing the huge plate glass windows.
During the Midwest storms with lighting cutting across the sky and
beautiful black clouds the likes of which I had never seen, the giant
wipers would pull across the windows with a rhythm almost as mesmerizing
as the spring-loaded sound of the turn signals.
By the time I got to State College I was tired, hungry and sick of my
music. But I felt worldly, having seen more than most 15 year olds I
knew. But it was also when I realized that having a needy teenage house
guest was not a welcome turn of events for my friend's mom, as stressed
out as I had ever seen a woman.
To be continued...
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