Matan's Third Birthday (Rosh Hashana 2a)

I live my life against the backdrop of daf yomi, and so when my oldest son turned three on the first day of tractate Rosh Hashana, the coincidence was not lost on me. The opening mishnah of tractate Rosh Hashana lists four “new years” that occur throughout the annual cycle: There is the new year for kings, which determines what counts as the first year of a king’s reign; the new year for tithing one’s livestock; the new year in the sabbatical cycle; and the new year for trees. Much of the first chapter deals with how we measure time and date significant events, including the question of which month the world was created – or, to invoke the Rosh Hashana liturgy, when we can say  ,היום הרת עולם“today is the birthday of the world.” For Matan, too, there were several dates on which we celebrated his birthday, each a reflection of the various ways we mark time, and each a reminder that the passage of time is joyous but bittersweet.

We first celebrated Matan’s birthday on the day after Yom Haatzmaut, which is the day he was born on the Hebrew calendar. And so Matan’s Hebrew birthday dovetails with Israel’s national birthday and serves, for us, as a connection to our adopted homeland. I will never forget sitting in the Jerusalem Theater for Hidon Hanakh, the three-hour long Bible quiz show that takes place each year on Yom Haatzmaut morning, watching as Jewish students from around the globe competed to answer questions about the finer points of Biblical narrative and history. During the lightning round the questions consisted of a series of dates listed in the Bible, and the students had to specify what happened, say, “on the first day of the first month of the second year.” As the tension mounted, my contractions became increasingly frequent, and I remember thinking that my son was surely excitedly reviewing all the Torah he had learned in the womb before making his exit into the world. And so I will forever associate his birthday with Hidon HaTankah and Yom Haatzmaut. This year, when Yom Haatzmaut rolled around, I began telling Matan stories about when he was born. Matan is fascinated by waterworks, so he was excited to learn that he once swam around in my belly – particularly when I told him that he got to swim there first, before his sisters took a turn. “And then I came out through the drain,” he told me, entirely unprompted. In a sense it is true, and so I just nodded.

The day after Yom Haatzmaut is the day I associate with Matan’s birth; I think of it as the birthday of my becoming a mother. But as a day to make Matan feel special and loved, we chose May eleventh, his birthday on the secular calendar. And so when I picked him up at Gan yesterday, I took him to the florist shop and bought him a colorful “happy birthday” helium balloon. Matan, whose current favorite picture book is about hot air balloons, was thrilled, and as we walked home, he looked up at the soaring balloon as if it were magical. “Don’t let go,” I warned him, “or the balloon will go up, up to the sky.” Ever obedient, Matan clutched the string with one hand and the balloon with the other, terrified of losing his precious new gift. I told him he could simply hold the string and let the balloon fly up, but apparently I had traumatized him with my stern cautionary words. Like me, Matan follows rules to a fault. He is so committed to doing the “right thing” that sometimes he misses out on life. I suppose we can both stand to learn to let go a bit. With every passing year I feel the string connecting us to one another growing longer, as Matan makes his own way in the world. When he was born I could provide for all his needs simply by holding him close to my body and letting him sleep and eat; now he has an intellectual curiosity that I cannot always satisfy (as I am reminded when he interrogates me, say, about how the fire is lit under a hot air balloon, and I have no idea myself), and emotional needs that I can sometimes only begin to fathom. I am aware of his limitations, but I remain hopeful that he will aspire to great heights so that I might follow him with the same wide, wondrous eyes with which he looked up at his beloved balloon as we walked through the streets of Jerusalem on that gorgeous spring afternoon.

In addition to Matan’s familial and personal birthdays, as well as the national birthday of the state, there is also the social aspect of celebrating a birthday, especially for a child. We will make him a little party next month on the date his Gan assigned to us when I asked, a week before his birthday, how we might mark the occasion. The teacher told me that they are all “booked” for May, but that I can have a date in early June. And so the celebration of Matan will continue. I feel bad that I did not think to ask the Gan sooner about choosing a date; it never occurred to me that the social calendar would fill up so quickly. This is ironic, given that Matan does not really associate with the other kids in Gan and tends to spend much of the day off in his own world, playing by himself or observing everyone else from a safe distance. When I dropped him off this morning, he asked if I could stay and play with him, and when I told him that he could play with Dariel or Yiftach or any of the other 25 kids in the room, he turned his head away shyly and looked at his feet, reluctantly waving goodbye as I walked out the door with a breaking heart. This is the first birthday on which I am aware of Matan’s social challenges. And so the occasion is somewhat bittersweet; I am excited that Matan is growing older, but I’m concerned for the struggles that lie ahead.

Not all of the new years discussed in tracate Rosh Hashana are celebratory occasions; the first of Elul, for instance, is merely a cutoff point for tithing. And birthdays, too, are not purely celebratory, at least not at my stage of life. I associate my own birthdays with growing older, with the sense that there is less time in which to reinvent myself or figure out, at last, what I want to “do with my life.” With each passing year I am aware that my parents will not be young and vibrant and deeply involved in my life forever; that my husband and I may not always enjoy good health; that my children may not always provide the gratification of making me feel that I am indispensable from the moment they wake up before dawn until the moment they fall asleep after dusk. With my twin daughters, who are “fifteen months,” we are still marking months rather than years, but each month, too, brings with it the heaviness of parental concern: The girls are developing slowly, at their own pace, and not a month passes when I do not find myself praying that they are healthy. 

It is prayer, perhaps, that links Rosh Hashana with birthday celebrations. On Rosh Hashana we stand for hours in synagogue praying fervently that the coming year should bring blessing. On birthdays our prayers take the form of a wish made over a cake filled with candles as the whole room pauses for a moment of silence before erupting in cries of “happy birthday.” I pray that my son will always retain his sense of wonder at the workings of the world, but that he will also learn how to engage with his peers and make friends. I pray that my daughters, too, will develop healthily and continue to charm everyone they meet with their bright blue eyes and beaming smiles. It is hard to believe that it was just three years ago that D and I were blessed to become parents. So far at least, it seems that no amount of worry or concern could ever be as deep and profound as the joys that we have known.