Mayim Rabim

This week's article in the Atlanta Jewish Times is worth giving a once-over.

The last time I went to mikvah, the attendant was really friendly and nice and casual and laid-back. I like it when it's laid back. Like a frivolous hair appointment, like happy girl-time. There's an excited kindness, a glad enthusiasm in the air that's more appropriate to mikvah night than the serious, grave attitude some mikvah ladies give you.

She even asked me if it was warm enough when I got in. It was toasty warm! just like the enclosed, safe, comfy womb it's meant to symbolize. She also asked if the chlorine level was too much, or if it was okay. It was better than it had been, for sure. I've asked the mikvah to use hydrogen peroxide instead of chlorine in the water, because you can use a lot less of the former, so it's safer & less smelly. It also breaks down in the environment & dosn't go on to poison fishes & ultimately us.

Anyway, I was glad that the chlorine amount was down. The last couple of mikvah visits I have come home stinking of it. Even though I washed again afterwards, I think it may have contributed to my developing a UTI.

Anyway, if any of you are a mikvah attendant or have the opportunity to serve that deeply holy purpose, please keep in mind to encourage joy in your women as they transform from niddah to tehorah.

I thought long & hard about what to do about my blisters last time I visted the mikvah. I'd developed them the week before by wearing some very comfy shoes with no socks or hose & because I walked a long way in them, well...

...so I had these huge blisters which I left alone & by the time likvah night came, they ad "disappeared" in the sense that they had totally deflated & were invisible. The mikvah attendant wouldn't be te wiser. But I would be.

I thought about looking it up in hilchos niddah, but I decided it would be easier just to pick them off after my long, epsom-salty soak. I did. What a nightmare. I kept pulling more and more skin away, which luckily didn't tear deeper so I would bleed, but it just wouldn't stop. There was always more dead skin to remove. Like a Pandora's Box of chatzitzah. Oy.

And it was all in a really awkward place to get to on my feet - I had to me a six-year-old contortionist with Circe Du Soleil to really get at it all.

...that is the question. I was considering not going back to the mikvah, but have since thought better of it and I'll tell you why all of this has even crossed my mind.

The miscarriage was over three months ago now, so I have been un-pregnant longer than I was ever pregnant. In that time, my husband and I have been fighting like cats & dogs. Yes, we're getting help, but it is not working.

It occurred to me that I could simply just not go back to the mikvah. Not to punish him, you understand - that's not my style. It's just that in the past three months he has displayed much autocratic and separation-type behaviour and our marriage has been severely jeopardized. My reason for remaining in niddah was that I have deep misgivings about sleeping with a man who has, by leaps and bounds, suddenly become a stranger to me.

And then I started reading all about it. There are so many entries in our history and law about mikvah use and marriage, but what it all really comes down to is sex. Who gets to have it, under what circumstances and why. More importantly, who gets to control sex.

There is a story of how all the women in Maimonides' community a thousand years ago refused to return to the mikvah until they were treated better. Although their wives were all threatened with divorce, the men caved.

In Jewish law, we learn that if no marital relations take place, then a divorce is mandated. But what I wanted from my husband was not a divorce. I just want him back. I also had no desire to hurt him by remaining in niddah. It just felt like he wasn't so married to me anymore and nothing we do seems to help, so physical separation seemed ideal to me.

Then I began thinking about the positive aspects of mikvah, like its soul-cleansing, spirit-liberating power and I thought to myself: that's what I really want.

I need the mikvah to take away the following:
niddut, stress, fear, anxiety, pain, grief, and all the other things in daily life which leave a crust of schmutz over my heart.

I need the mikvah to grant the following:
open-heartedness, safety, purity, faith, trust, groundedness, and all the other things that are required to have a deep, intimate relationship with G-d and others, especially with my spouse.

So even though my inclination to withdraw is valid and only a method of protecting my most vulnerable parts, I recognize that I will reap more expansive benefits from continuing my mikvah practice. It will help heal me each month ever so slightly so that I am rejuvenated and can once engage in the fray that our marriage has become.

primal waters of
soul stirring live drown the howls
from my empty womb

The first time I was to visit a mikvah, I had to journey four hours from my home town to the city where the closest ritualarium was. I travelled with the woman who had taught me and was to supervise me.

During the second part of the trip, on the ferry, I mentioned to her what a close relationship I had with my uterus. I explained to her that at moments of great transformation in my life previously, I had been known to spontaneously start my period. She looked at me intensely and I saw her start to grok what I was really saying. "You'll tell me if that happens, won't you?"
I agreed.

It was the deepest darkest December. Almost like we were travelling in secret.

I had read Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan's Waters of Eden, Rivka Slonim's Total Immersion and spoken to married friends, converts and the like so I could better prepare myself for the experience. Be present with it and open up. Now here we were on a big, loud street in a big, loud city behind the biggest synagogue I had ever seen.

My best girlfriend met me there and we hung out in the car while the mikvah lady made things all ready. I had my feet up on the dash and it was only then that I saw the polish on my toes.

I panicked. Oh no! I have to go inside in a couple of minutes and I have chatzitzah on me! Where's a Safeway?!? I didn't know my way around in this city, so I relied on my girlfriend to direct me to the nearest store with nail polish remover.

After racing away and racing back, I clumsily rubbed & scraped at my toe nails to remove all trace of the offending laquer. Just as I was satisfied it was all gone, we were waved through the door to the mikvah.

Only once I was inside, after using the toilet -- I was so nervous -- and reshowering, did I look through the drawers in the preparation room for floss (I had forgotten that, too) and discovered the complimentary nail polish remover.

I felt a bit sheepish, but oh, well. I didn't want to keep anyone waiting anyway.

I approached the pool with the mikvah lady and my friend. I was awestruck. I felt like I was staring right down infinity.

The attendant asked if I'd just "checked" myself, concerned that the high stress of a lifecycle event might alter my cycle as I had warned her. Nothing had changed. There was no blood and had not been for over two weeks.

I cannot acurrately express the full experience of being enveloped by the mayim chayim.

After I had completed the number of immersions I had been instructed to and recited the blessing, the attendant smiled broadly, danced and began to sing to me:
"Draw water in joy
from the living well
draw water in joy
from the living well
mayim chayim
water of life
shalom."
I just wish I had been allowed to wear my contacts!
:)

So, that's how I became tahor for the first time.

I went back to the mikvah in the prescribed time after my last period. The period had been "normal", for me, which is what my doctor had asked me to look out for. If I had a normal period, she said, then I knew that my miscarriage the month earlier was complete & that it would be safe for my husband and I to start trying for another baby. An actual baby this time, not a spontaneous abortion. I couldn't imagine.

My feelings walk that line between eternal hope & utter faithlessness as I dial the mikvah attendant for the night of the week I need to go. She answers, treats me with total indifference, then hangs up. I am ovulating. I won't go to mikvah until the next night, so we will probably miss our opportunity to conceive again, just as we did each month of our marriage...except once.

I feel so blessed that I got the mikvah attendant that I did for the immersion I made two weeks after the miscarriage. She was so kind & sympathetic. But this other woman I'd had before. She made out like it was inconvenient to be there for me & that she was bored while I got ready. I'd done my preparation at home, but there's still a bit to complete at the mikvah & she was quite obviously bored. She didn't check me at all, so when I asked, "Aren't you going to check my hands (or anything else)?" she said, "I only check what people ask me to. I don't want to turn anybody off." I explained to her that I was fully mitzvah-observant & was comitted to taharat hamishpachah. I'm not sure she heard me.

I felt very conspicuous dunking under her supervision.

So I was on my way back now, second visit since losing the baby. I was 10 minutes late. "We'd said 7:15, yes?" she greeted me at the door. I apologized for being late. She told me another woman was coming at 7:45 who was being supervised by somebody else, & that we'd have to clear out before then. "I'm sure you will be ready to leave." she stated.

I relieved myself, washed, said Asher Yatzar, showered & rang for her in my little towel. Alone in the silent cold marble chamber.

When she retrieved me, she wasn't all business anymore. She stood me under the bright white heat-lamp while she checked my back, hands and feet. She was quite amiable and chatty, which was a total surprise. I accepted her sudden friendliness with only slight suspicion and responded accordingly. She hadn't brought me slippers, so I asked her to check the bottom of my feet. Somehow in the few feet between the preparation room and the steps to the mikvah, I had picked up all sorts of debris. "Oy!" she exclaimed, "You know, this wouldn't happen if they just put the slippers in the rooms, but they don't. They put them out of the way & then we forget to bring them to you & now look. It's a good thing you asked me to check." She left me next to the pool as she recounted all of this, returning with a damp wash cloth. She washed my feet for me right there, on the mat just above the water.

"Okay, now whenever you're ready." She turned away, as she does, leaving an outstretched hand for me to hang my towel on. There is no need to invade my privacy by watching me walk nude into the water.

"Okay." I said. I positioned myself, tried to focus & ground. "Be careful of your hands," she called out from behind me, "your arms are spread quite wide & you don't want to touch the sides." I swallowed my protestations, being very familiar with procedure & this particular mikvah, & thanked her.

I exhaled, shut my eyes & went under, the bubbling loud in my ears. Let go of everything. Divest. NIFTAR: release, separate, die...

She pronounced it kosher & passed me the humorous doily to cover my head. I crossed my arms around my own waist & squeezed tight. "Baruch Atah HASHEM, Elokeuinu Melech ha-olam, asher kideshanu bemitzvosov vitzivanu al ha-tevilah."
"Amen."

I placed the doily back up on the marble-tiled shelf & made my next immersion. Water cover & envelope me until there is no ME. Egoless: Ayn Anochiyut. Ayn Sof.

"Kosher."

Exhale. Relax. Disappear.
Empty me, please G-d: RAYKANUT!

"Kosher."

Transform my soul into a whisper.
A whisper among the myriad voices of Your Creation: LAV!

"Kosher...Pefect!"

I had a miscarriage Rosh Chodesh Adar. Ironic, isn't it? The Jewish month of joy, the new moon, Ash Wednesday, Chinese New Year...any way you slice it, it was a big day.

I was at the end of my first trimester. The time when finally parents-to-be cautiously breathe a sigh of relief that the most fragile third of the pregnancy has been successfully navigated. The time when family & friends may be privileged to hear the good news of an immanent new baby Jew.

Instead of sharing this news with the excitement and awe that we had been looking forward to on that day, we buried our fetus, along with its placenta, under a sapling. The hopes for our first child crushed. We really wanted this baby. No ritual or name for this little one, yet its early departure left me with the status of a yoledet - a woman who has recently given birth - according to Jewish Law. Which means that if we ever manage to conceive another child & it is a boy, that my husband, who is of the Israelite class, will not be allowed to perform pidyon haben. This makes sense to me, as the "first born" is the one who opens the womb initially. And this child did just that. A blindingly painful 5 hours of contractions, nausea & chaos. But not really. I delivered the entire contents of my womb on my own, thank G-d, and the only medical advice I received was, "Don't stick anything inside you for two weeks".

Well, being an Orthodox couple, we knew that a yoledet bears a longer period of nidah from her husband than a woman who has only experienced her menses. There was no way we could be intimate again for at least the next two weeks anyway, on religious grounds. And to be honest, I was feeling very protective of myself "down there", so was in no hurry.

I needed time to grieve our loss, as did my husband. And to deal with this flow of blood that signals death. One of the reasons given for a woman to go to mikvah before she unites with her husband is that she is brought so close to death by her cycle. Whether it is the loss of an ovum or a stillbirth child, G-d forbid, she must ready herself for intimacy by counting a minimum amount of time after her blood & then returning to another womb of sorts.

The mikvah is like going home. Like both your Father and your Mother enveloping you - but not your Earthly parents, The Supernal Aba & Ema. G-d.

The blood never seemed to stop. I felt like I was dying, but I knew it was just my fears there there might be something wrong with me. I confided in my friend Ariellah, who said, "How do you know that this wasn't just a very high soul who visited you temporarily because it needed to do a last little bit of teshuvah? How do you know that this Being did not find joy in you while you held it within you?" I wept.

As my breasts & belly shrank, I brought confusion and anger into my davenen. I had said a special prayer, traditional to Medieval Italian Jewish women, to protect myself & my pregnancy from any disaster. It hadn't worked. There were no answers. I didn't know what to do with my agony or questions, so I gave them all to G-d.

I tried so hard to focus on the things I had to be thankful for each time I threw myself on the bed & cried. I was so disappointed. But my womb did its job, B"H, and I did not hemorrage, B"H, and I did not require a D&C, B"H, and I was never in any physical danger, B"H, and my doctor is not concerned about my body. She is only very sorry for me.

During the "white" days I dreaded the bedikat. I didn't want to see any blood because I wanted to feel like I was healing and yet seeing the wrong color would assure me that I could postpone intimacy, that I could remain cloistered in my private grief. I hated all the counting & all the rules, which I had never hated before, because I just wanted to be free and on my own and not have any externally applied boundaries to my process of letting go and coming around.

Mikvah night came, "finally". I was full of mixed feelings during my preparation, partly because I wasn't sure if I felt emotionally ready to share a bed with my husband quite yet, as wonderful and supportive as he had been during this difficult time. My body seemed ready, though, showing me that I was already ovulating again. Eager to risk another miscarriage, or possibly a living child.

I was extra scrupulous in the tub, as it would be Shabbos when I immersed. I had never done tevilah on Shabbos, so I checked with the mikvah lady ahead of time about what extra or different or special things I would need to do or be aware of during my prep & while in the water. She reminded me to floss before candle lighting and to be more careful about my hands and feet. She also asked me to tie my hair back with an elastic after I had combed everything out, as knots in hair could not be unsnarled after Shabbos and those disqualify the tevilah. She was very nice about it.

I arrived at the mikvah and she let me in happily. She was 8 months pregnant. I tried not to feel jealous. I don't want to put the ayin hara on her or her baby. We wished each other a Shabbat Shalom and she showed me into one of the changing rooms so I could undress. "Don't worry," she said with a smile, "it's really fast on Friday night, because there's nothing for you to do."

I came out into the light in my towel for her to check me over. She said I looked pretty, which was very sweet of her. Then we went into the mikvah room and I stood in front of the steps. Such a beautiful, sacred place where all my fears, my shortcomings, my veneers of Self, of Ego which cover my neshamah get washed away each cycle. A place I used to be so eager to visit and now, not so much. As she closed the door behind her I suddenly broke down in sobs.

"Aw, are you okay?" she asked as she came over with a sympathetic look on her face.
"No," I answered through my tears, "I'm here because I had a miscarriage, so I was just hoping that I would not have had to come back to the mikvah this early. I'm sorry - I didn't think I would do this."
She gave me a great big hug, her with her great big belly & me in my white cotton towel. She looked me in the eye reassuringly & told me that this was a new beginning. She was right. I thanked her for reminding me.

I gave her my towel and descended into the warm, healing waters. The soft swirling whisper they made as they surrounded me was comforting. Because it was Shabbos, I dunked one time "for my shower" that normally I would take when I arrived at the mikvah on a chol day. Then a second time as usual. she pronounced it kosher. So I reached for the cloth to put on my head, crossed my arms in front of me and said the berachah with very narrow focus. After her "ameyn", I went under three more times.

Once with the hope that G-d would heal my body and soul so that I would be ready and able to birth a living, surviving child one day, drowning my tears and washing them away.

"Kosher."

Once with the request that G-d would help my husband and me through our sadness and strengthen our marriage from this crisis.

"Kosher."

Then one final time that I be enabled to make myself and my work and the way I am in the world all one, doing G-d's will.

"Kosher."

May this be the will of the Holy one, HaKadosh baruch Hu.
A new beginning.
Yeysh mey-ayin.