Rant #1,668: This Date In (My) History

First of all, I hope that everyone had a nice Mother's Day.

I had a nice day, very tiring, but nice.

My mother in-law is deceased, so my wife and I regularly visit the cemetery that she is buried in on Mother's Day, and in spite of the rain and the cold, we went to visit again yesterday.

I really did not get to know my mother in law that well. She was very sick when the girl that would later be my wife and I started dating.

But she seemed to be a nice person, and I have not heard anybody in my wife's family have anything bad to say about her, so I have to go with that.

And she was nice to me, even through her sickness.

She attended our wedding, and seemed to be very happy and proud that her daughter was getting married.

And then, just a few months into our marriage, she passed away.

I think she would have been a proud grandmother to our son, and my own mother said that she thinks that she and my mother in law would have gotten along fine.

I do believe that.

But whatever the case, her memory was remembered yesterday, as was the importance of motherhood in our society, and also the importance of womanhood, which is being attacked from all angles in the world in which we live in.

How sad that is, but Mother's Day demonstrates that you can call yourself what you want to call yourself, but women have a unique gift that only they can give us, and on Mother's Day, we celebrate them and that gift.

We spent a good part of the day at my sister's house celebrating the day, and four of the most important women in my life--my wife, my mother, my sister and my aunt--who is not a mother, but has become a mother hen, an aunt and a great aunt to so many of us--were there.

Moving onto today, May 9 is an important day in my life, as today is the 46th anniversary of my bar mitzvah, the actual ceremony that made me, at least in a Jewish religion, a man.

It seems like a different life, but 46 years ago at this very moment as I am writing this, I was in bed, still sick as a dog but not as sick as I was 24 hours earlier.

I had, going with one of the themes of today's Rant, the "mother" of all nervous reactions to what I was about to go through.

The first indication that I was barely going to get through this was that a few weeks before, I somehow popped a blood vessel in my throat, and I was bleeding from that area for days.

I seem to remember that I first noticed it in school, that my saliva seemed to taste funny, and I spit into a bathroom sink, and it came out bloody.

This lasted a day or two, until I finally told my mother. By this time, I was also spitting out pieces of flesh from my throat, so my mother took me to the local medical center (my regular doctor was on vacation and this seemed to be an emergency situation), which refused to look at me because 1) we were not a member of the center (it was a HIP center, if I remember) and 2) I was not considered a child anymore, so they would not let me see the pediatrician there, I had to see the regular doctor, and they would not let me see him until I was diagnosed by another doctor, and again, we were not members ...

Yes, this went on and on, finally I was seen by someone after I spit out this mess that I had in my throat right onto their white carpet (yes, true story), and they didn't really diagnose anything.

That malady went away, but leading up to the week of my bar mitzvah, I became sick from nerves, and I mean really, really sick.

My temperature rose to 105, and in those days, that was not enough to put me in the hospital, especially after my regular pediatrician came to the house after his vacation (remember when they used to do that?) and said it was 101 percent from nerves.

So I sat there in bed, and my Orthodox grandfather declared that no matter how sick I was, if I had to do my haftorah from the bed, then that was how it was going to have to be.

There was no way out, and I was going to do my bar mitzvah speech no matter what.

Then, I watched the New York Knicks on TV during the evening of May 8. This was what became the championship game of the NBA for that year, and it had an influence on me that resonates to this day.

The game was blacked out in New York, which was the custom at the time for such a game, but it was shown live on Channel 8, the Connecticut affiliate of ABC. I was able to get Channel 8 very clearly with my TV, so I watched the game on that channel, live and in black and white.

Anyway, I saw Team Captain and Center Willis Reed limp out on the court. He had been injured earlier on in the series, was not supposed to play, but he limped out, took warmup shots, played in the game early on, and with Walt Frazier having the game of his life, the Knicks won their first of just two championships they have ever won.

I don't know what it was--seeing Reed limp out on the court, the Knicks winning--but it kind of galvanized me, and convinced me that if they could do it, so could I.

And I did, sick as I was.

And I didn't do it in my bed, but at our synagogue, in front of the congregation, friends and family.

And yes, in front of my Orthodox grandfather.

And afterward, when we had people over to the house, I felt fine, as if I hadn't had 105 temperature just two or three days before--a great weight was lifted off my shoulders, and I was fine.

So today has a place in my history, my personal history, that I will never, ever forget.

I know I have told the story many times, but yes, I do link Mother's Day and my bar mitzvah together, because in a way, they both celebrate what we used to call respect--respect for women and motherhood on Mother's Day, and respect for traditions on my bar mitzvah day.

And no matter what, and no matter what anyone believes, respect is important, and it is and was important to me on those two days.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T ... what a concept!