Suddenly Chatty

I had the pleasure and privilege of attending a bat mitzvah yesterday. My friend Bonnie's lovely daughter, Mackenzie, was called to the Torah for the first time. The service was moving and Mackenzie did a wonderful job. I was thrilled to be there, my first time at a bat mitzvah, or for a Shabbat service, for that matter.

Abby was invited to attend with me, but she is taking part in a Saturday morning math and basketball program at her school, and yesterday was the first session. We decided it would be best for her to begin her program and send her regrets. She would have found the bat mitzvah very interesting, but I do think it would have been rather long for her, as well.

Last night, after dinner, Abby started asking me about the bat mitzvah. Who was there? What did Mackenzie do? Was there music? What did the synagogue look like? Was it all in Hebrew? I answered her questions, and then the topic of family conversation changed.

A few minutes later, Abby said, "Mom, we are SO not done talking about the bat mitzvah."

Every once in a while, she surprises me. She's never said anything like that before, and it cracked me up.

We continued to talk about the bat mitzvah, the Torah, the prayer book, the music, the tallit, the people who were there, and different parts of the service. When we had all but exhausted the topic, she announced that she wanted to talk about her math and basketball program.

It was less of a conversation and more of a data dump, but as I told Earl later, she opens up so infrequently that whenever she's in the mood to talk, I make it my business to be in the mood to listen.

She also expounded on her Friday morning social skills group, which she almost missed this week. (It slipped our minds because of the snow days on Wednesday and Thursday.) She left nothing unsaid, and was adept at defining expected and unexpected behaviors, and how they can influence what others think of us. She gave examples of behaviors from her group, and even from some real-life situations where others had demonstrated unexpected behaviors to her.

She was less successful at coming up with examples of her own unexpected behaviors. I was able to help her out on that one.

It was such a gift to see Abby so engaged in a topic (or three) and to want to communicate about it. The give-and-take of a conversation needs a little work, but for now, I was just so thrilled that she wanted to talk to me. The gift of gab, indeed.