Mayim Rabim

After my unsettling telephone encounter with the Mikvah Lady, I wasn't sure what to do next. I wanted to discuss the whole pre-wedding mikvah business with someone who would understand. Someone familiar. Someone I had actually met in person. The problem is that I have a great family, an awesome network of friends, and wonderful in-laws, but very few of them fit the criteria for discussing this particular problem: I needed an adult Jewish woman who could discuss sex frankly, who had gone through a traditional Jewish wedding, who was observant enough to both know and care about taharat hamishpacha, and who was liberal enough to have a sense of flexibility about it. Most of my local friends were disqualified for one reason or another, and when I called an aunt whom I'm close to and who had had an Orthodox wedding, it turned out she hadn't actually bothered to immerse -- although she thought it was a nice idea for me. (Were people just really not into T"H around 1980?) Then I called my mother-in-law to chat about the whole business and discovered that she hadn't immersed either, but after several minutes of hilarity at the whole Mikvah Lady episode she averred that she'd be happy to accompany me to the mikvah. (I also found out that she has a previously undisclosed tattoo.) Finally, I called my own mother, who I knew had never immersed -- and floated (ahem) the idea of doing Girls' Night At The Mikvah. She announced that if I really wanted to do it, I shouldn't attend the mikvah with anyone except her. Oy.

Well, as G.I. Joe said, knowing is half the battle. (G.I. Joe, of course, never had to schedule a mikvah appointment. Give me ninja counterintelligence ops in the Arctic any day.) I had more than a few books on Judaism floating around the house, I had access to several libraries, and I had a DSL connection, so I embarked on a merry little course of self-directed research into taharat hamishpacha. Eli and I both enjoy learning all the things they never taught us in Hebrew school, but I'm pretty sure I was more into this than he was. All the same, he dealt admirably with sudden T"H-related intrusions into our daily conversation. ("Pass me the pepper, sweetie. If we were Orthodox and married and so forth, you wouldn't be allowed to do that right now. But since we're not worrying about it, I'd like the parmesan too.") He even joined in from time to time, scanning websites, paging through my books, and listening patiently as I tried to explain what I thought our ancestors might have been thinking over all the centuries of piling prohibition atop prohibition. The end result of all this was that we both knew a lot more about the history and symbolic/cultural significance of taharat hamishpacha than when we'd started, and we agreed that it was a fascinating example of halakhic development, not to mention a real pain in the tuchus. Unfortunately, none of this did much to answer the Scheduling Question.

As a matter of fact, it helped to complicate things a little further. I had already known that I'd have to remove things like contact lenses and nail polish before I immersed, but it took contemporary readings to make me realize that my birth control patch was basically the textbook definition of chatzitah. This was an important point, because I'd already realized that I'd need an extra patch to get through my wedding without starting my period -- but I usually switched patches on Monday night, which was way too early to get away with attending the mikvah unless I actively lied about when my wedding would take place (and I dislike lying). But even if I resigned myself to getting two extra patches -- and I had -- the rest of the week was already crowded: Tuesday there'd be a Yom Tov ending (I didn't even want to think about those complications), my in-laws were showing up Wednesday, my parents on Thursday, and most of the other wedding guests on Friday, when we were all getting together for dinner. Shabbat on Saturday wouldn't end till super-late, although I thought I still might prefer ducking out after Havdalah and trying to squeeze my dip in as inconspicuously as possible on the one night when nobody would expect us to show up for Yet Another Event. Only, in that case, when would I find time to paint my toenails (nevermind maybe getting a manicure and pedicure) before we started taking pictures at 11 am on Sunday?

The whole business was making me crazy (not too far to go at that point). I had florists, photographers, caterers, a job and a number of important relationships to juggle, but the mikvah thing kept hanging in there. One of the things I had discovered about planning a wedding is that it's a matter of identifying your half-conscious dreams and deciding which ones you want to go to the trouble of making real (dancing, yes; Renaissance costume, not so much). I hadn't thought about mikvah immersion much, but I knew I wanted to do it -- my research had, oddly enough, only strengthened that conviction. I'd always envisioned sunlight streaming through into the living waters, softly but intensely spoken prayers, and a sense of sisterhood complete with slightly wicked smiles on everyone's faces as we anticipated what we were preparing for. It would be -- it had to be -- a celebration of new life. But the likely scenario that emerged from my reading was nothing like that: women covering every inch of themselves, creeping into the mikvah under the cover of darkness, being carefully segregated from each other at every turn, undergoing clinical inspection from a stranger. It sounded almost shameful. Now, I consider myself a reasonably private and modest person by secular American standards. Both my menstrual cycle and my sex life are nobody's business except mine and Eli's, and I don't generally run around announcing them, but there's nothing shameful about either, and G-d knows our tradition has been happy to discuss these issues at the drop of a bedikah cloth. My first time wasn't going to be in the dark, I decided. My first time was going to be special.

I dislike lying, but I love figuring out ways to bend the rules.

(to be continued...)

Dulcie is a thirtyish Jewish woman who averages out Conservative; she is writing about her experiences with tongue firmly planted in cheek. This essay is the second of a three-part series; the first essay is available here, and the final essay is available here.