Sometimes we do things and we only reflect on their significance long after the event is over. Sometimes, however, I find just the opposite to be true – and I see the significance of an action before it is even taken.

I’ll explain.

Last night, I created a new folder for our filing cabinet. “Wow, Romi,” you might be thinking. “That’s the best you could come up with for a blog post today?”

But the file is entitled “Bar Mitzvah File.”

And as I filled out the words and stuck the very first piece of paper into the file (invitations that we won from the Orot Etzion Chinese Auction for the bar mitzvah! How fun!), I realized that I was taking a significant action.

Looking at the words I’d just written, I pictured the many times that I will retrieve this file; how it will fill and empty, fill and empty with ideas, plans and designs.

I thought about the moment, 11 years from now, when I take it out for the last time, dust it off, and get ready to organize that final bar mitzvah. And then I thought about the moment, in 12 years, or so, when I will look at those words “Bar Mitzvah File” and think back to six lovely affairs (Gd willing) and all of the memories they’ll entail. Perhaps by then we will already have a “Wedding File” sitting next to this one in the filing cabinet.

For now, it’s just a plain file folder housing one small piece of paper.

It’s a strange feeling, sitting on this side of events, to understand before they happen just how significant that file will become, how many times it will be used, and how many memories it will help us to create.