A day, part three
A week ago when I was speaking to my mom I said well the baby naming is at 6:15PM so you don’t have to worry about getting off of work. She said, “I am hoping I can be there.” I said, what?, you better be there. We’re having a double baby naming for my two great nieces that were born within five weeks of each other. In the equal opportunity new Jewish life, girl’s get namings since they don’t get a bris (I think just being thankful you’re not getting a bris is enough).
Tonight I went to Temple Sinai on St. Charles Avenue with all my family to give the girls their Hebrew names. It’s a reform synagogue, my nephew who converted feels more comfortable there – reform means it is woman friendly and gay friendly – you read the books from left to right, mostly in English – and all around different than the synagogues I grew up in. It’s not that the gender equality is bothersome, it’s more the organ jamming in the background which is a little off putting and not nostalgic. The whole concept is kind of like your parents smoking pot. You just don’t want to experience it.
Meanwhile, we were two or three segments into the service when I noticed mom was a no show. I went out and called her and she said that she couldn’t make it. She had thought she’d catch a cab and then have me drive her home, but the cabs were running late so she opted not to catch one.
There is something odd about a woman who will leave her house at 4AM and drive through sugar cane fields and Cypress dense bayous to care for 115 drooling, depends clad people she knows hardly at all and yet, she fails miserably with her primary group. She missed my high school graduation, my college graduation, and countless other events in my life, not to mention her grandchildren, and now great grandchildren’s lives. It is by far one of the most perplexing behaviors I have come to know.