Oops... again

This seems to be a season of social blunders. Wasn’t it just 2 weeks ago that we totally missed an important dinner? Well, today we showed up for a bat mitzvah, actually on time for a change, but 3 weeks early.

When the invitation came in quite a while ago, I remember saying, “It’s a good thing the party is a luncheon since we are having 40 people to our house to dinner that night for the Side-by-Side auction dinner.” I bought a nice card and wrote a check to enclose. I even pulled the invitation out of the drawer to check the time of services, never again looking at the date.

This bat mitzvah is for the daughter of one of our neighbors who at 46 found she was pregnant for the first time. She is a very special child who has brought great joy into her parents lives. We definitely wanted to be there.

The service is going to be at our old synagogue in Virginia. As we drove there today, I remarked that I felt the same degree of disinterest that I always had when I attended services there. When we were there, any attempts at creating a volunteer choir failed miserably. No one cared whether we showed up or not.

As we drove into the parking lot today, it was virtually empty. That’s when we started to wonder if we had the date wrong. Even at Temple Micah, there are a core of faithfuls who show up every week whether or not there is a bar mitzvah. But not so apparently here.

Instead of kicking myself too hard, I looked at an extra 6 hours on a day when 40 people are coming to dinner as an unexpected gift. My husband said, “I’m taking this as a sign from above that it’s finally time to by the iPhone.” I knew it was inevitable.

No one ever needs to know. However if she looks closely the bat mitzvah girl might wonder why the check was dated three weeks early...