Mazel Tov, Menachem. I did it all for you.

The videographer, a heavyset man in an ill-fitting red jacket, put a meaty hand on my shoulder. “Father, into the groom’s room, let’s go,” he said in accented English as he steered me forward, like a teacher leading a disobedient child toward the principal’s office.

His assistant, barely a child, followed half a foot behind, carrying the bulky video equipment into the small room where my son, the chassan, stood. Menachem was wearing his kittel, and on top of that, a raincoat. He smiled nervously at me as I entered.

His future father-in-law was consulting a paper, worrying about who would get the third brachah, and one of his friends was reminding him of various minhagim. I just wanted to enjoy the moment.

Someone knocked on the door and brought in a plate with a little mountain of ashes, perpetual reminders of His holy home, and he smeared some on his fingers. Menachem lifted his hat as the fellow ran his fingers across the front of his head, leaving an odd streak of gray jutting out from under Menachem’s hairline.

I leaned against the wall, feeling light and invisible, almost like being drunk even though I had only had a cup of ginger ale at the kabbalas panim. There was a window high in the room, and the golden, late-day dust swirling around the room was not unlike the way I felt, vague and buoyant.

Red-jacket was suddenly back, hissing that the fathers needed to bless the groom and go out to the chuppah. His assistant, the frightened-looking kid, pointed the camera at me, and I spoke quietly, not really trusting my voice.

“I would prefer to do this in privacy, not in front of the cameras, if possible.”

He turned to his boss, who shrugged elaborately and made an I’ve-seen-it-all expression.

“Whatever father wants,” he said, and they trooped out of the room.

I raised my hands and touched Menachem’s head lightly.

Do you remember, Menachem, when you were my only friend? Do you remember those nights, when it was just me and you, and you would lay there staring at me with that serious expression, the words rolling off my tongue and landing all around you?

It was a tough time, no? You were what, maybe eight, nine months old? Oh, Menachem, how I wanted to run, to leave the small apartment and bound down those steps three at a time and never come back — but there was always you. It kept coming back to the same thing, I had a baby, and a father doesn’t turn his back on his children. Sure, there were rough times, but you were like a rope around my ankle, keeping me tied to the apartment, to life within it, with your mother.

And maybe you remember how when things got really bad, when I needed someone to talk to and could bear no more of your mother’s cold silence, I would take you out of your crib, in the middle of the night sometimes, and bring you to the living room and lay you down on the mat, the red one with the blue trains all around it. I would pour myself a cold drink and speak to you, my only friend back then.

“Menachem,” I would tell you, “I don’t know what the plan is for your mother and me, but trust me I will make it work, if only for your sake.” You would smile then, a smile that would just about break my heart, telling me to try a little harder, to please find the strength to give you a happy home. Then, when I felt up to the challenge, I would carry you back to your crib. It was our little secret. No one would ever know.

Do you know what happened, Menachem? Of course you know, I would tell you everything back then. Your mother came around. It wasn’t easy for her, nor for me, but we found a common language, we both grew up and tried to make it work. I learned a few things back then, Menachem. One, that even a marriage with challenges is still a marriage. Your mother was still my wife, and a person needs a wife, and she was still your mother. A marriage is not just the sum total of its parts, it’s a thing, a good thing. I also learned that if people really want to work something out, if they talk to each other, not just at each other, there’s a good chance it will work.

Baruch Hashem, it did, and Menachem, it was because of you. You were the reason I tried so hard, and you were the reason we had the happy home we did, eventually.

The pushy videographer was back. “Listen father, you need to hurry up and let the other father do the blessing, too. The people, they are waiting already.”

I nodded.

Menachem, I bless you with peace, that it should be natural and easy in your home, but when you do have to work for peace— and there will be such times — Hashem should give you strength, wisdom and patience.

I kissed his forehead and stepped back for my mechutan.

I gripped Menachem’s arm in my own and stepped out of the room, where my wife was waiting. How symbolic that we should walk down this way, my wife and I, together, but joined by Menachem, our firstborn, the one who had made us into a unit. Our other children had joined a family — Menachem had joined two fragments, two shards of people, and made them whole.

I could hear the music playing — the violin, which the band had taken an extra two hundred and fifty dollars for, promising it would be a “different” chuppah with the violin — as we walked on. They were right, it turns out, because the violin was sublime, its sound flowing like liquid and giving expression to my mood.

I walked along the snowy-white runner and wondered if the parents that trod this path each and every night of the week felt as I did, that they were the first and only to do so. People smiled as we walked past them, but I barely noticed who was there, seeing shapes instead of faces. I did notice Gershon Lampner, however, and I had another memory.

Menachem, do you remember him? It was just before your bar mitzvah when things started to collapse. I still think the business could have been saved, but that just wasn’t the way things worked out. Everything came at once, the banks, the rent increase, the bad loan, and it was too much for us to bear. Filing for bankruptcy was bad, but not as bad as what it brings with it. It was the humiliation, the feeling of being totally wrung out, of being unable to continue.

Do you remember Gershon Lampner from back then? He was the lawyer who helped us through it, and also the one who suggested that perhaps I wasn’t cut out for business. There were voices inside of me that kept telling me that I could make it, that things could still work out for me, but he was older and more experienced than I was, and he was a lawyer after all, so I believed him. I accepted his advice and I went to work as a salesman for Gottlieb, the electronics guy. It was horrible, after running my own insurance business with twelve employees, to drive around all day begging disinterested storeowners to let me in, besides which I simply couldn’t make it financially that way.

You were the oldest, Menachem, and you wanted to go to sleepaway camp, like all your friends. I told you that I wasn’t sure that it was going to work, and instead of complaining, like most kids would have, and reminding me that I had told you that you could go when you were thirteen, you nodded understandingly and told me it was fine, that you would have fun in day camp.

That was when I decided to fight back, that I owed you more than that, that you deserved it as much as any other kid. The next morning, I went into Gottlieb and told him thanks, but no thanks. I could read his mind, thinking that he had only hired me as a chesed anyway and now he would have to train someone else, and I walked out singing.

I borrowed twenty thousand dollars from Uncle Shimon, something you know was really hard for me, but I did it for you, and started the children’s shoe store. Baruch Hashem, the next year you were able to go to camp, and now all the kids go to camp.

That was all for you.

We were walking up the steps now to the raised podium, where a cousin of the kallah was singing in a loud, exuberant voice, welcoming the chassan. I imagined the young singer, practicing in his dormitory room for months before, entertaining his friends, and knew that somewhere in the crowd his mother was pointing him out to all the women in her row.

We stood there, Menachem, my wife and I, and the image of the kallah, flanked by her parents, filled the doorway. They walked towards us, the little entourage that was about to become one with our own, and the music switched again to the song our kallah had selected.

I had a thought, then, that the whole walking down the chuppah to music thing wasn’t just ceremonial,it was symbolic; the long aisle was a metaphor for the journey preceding this moment, the music selected reflective of the song we all choose as background music for our individual journeys. While the song Simi had selected was soft and moving, there were notes of triumph in it, strong undertones of optimism. She was a happy girl, Simi, and I knew — prayed — that she would make a good wife for Menachem.

They came closer and I felt my son tremble even harder. I was struck with another thought. Once, there was a fellow in our shul, Jerry, who had become religious late in life. He would shake back and forth with very exaggerated movements during davening, and the kids would laugh at him. He once explained that he saw shaking during tefillah as a way to get rid of accumulated dirt, and, as he said, “I got lots to shake off.”

I wondered if Menachem was shaking off the pain and frustration of his twenty-two years, preparing to begin marriage free of hurtful words and thoughts.

I looked over at my wife, and quietly asked her how her feet were holding up. “Baruch Hashem,” she mouthed back and smiled.

Oh Menachem! Surely you remember that, when Mommy’s knee was bothering her and no one knew what was wrong. It got to the point that it was difficult for her to walk, so Dr. Simms finally sent her for tests. You were in yeshivah then, and we didn’t want to weigh you down with the news, but I remember that it meant the world to Mommy that you daven for her. Especially after the diagnosis, she was convinced that it was your Torah and davening that would save her.

At first, it was all so confusing, and there were so many doctors, suggesting so many things. I remember after one appointment, Mommy and I went to a coffee shop and discussed all our options. We agreed that we owed it to you, all of you, to treat it as aggressively as possible so that you could have your Mommy back.

Yes, Menachem, I remember telling Mommy just before the surgery that she would walk her kids down the chuppah on two healthy feet.

We did that for you too, Menachem....

Menachem raises a gleaming shoe and brings it down on the oversized glass. It shatters on impact, and all at once, there is an eruption of noise and emotion. A trumpet blares.

I turn to embrace my son and he falls heavily against me, his head on my shoulder. I hold him close.

Mazel Tov, Menachem.

I did it all for you ...

Over his shoulder, I see my wife weeping, glowing, a different kind of tears coursing down her cheeks.

No, Menachem, that isn’t exactly true.

Now I know I did it all for me.

(Originally featured in Calligraphy, Succos 5776)