My Life in Water | Writing Contest - Santa Fe New Mexican

After my last mikvah, I missed the water and took up swimming. The mikvah for so many years cleansed and immersed me. The bath surrounded and caressed my body with a soft, compliant buoyancy. There is nothing quite like allowing time every month to ritually, intentionally rebirth yourself, and, of course, be closer to God. There’s also the sex afterward. Abstinence always makes the heart grow fonder. That was during the years when our bed was more active and trying to be observant, meant seven days after the flow with no hanky-panky.

Not all Jewish women use the mikvah, but I began just before my marriage and continued until I stopped bleeding. But when that was over, after my invitation to be cleansed so beautifully, so thoroughly, so privately on the moon cycles, a loss beyond my wildest dreams came over me. Like a tsunami.

Without my monthly water fix, there was an addictive element to my pious regularity, I felt grounded. A realization dawned on me that my life had focused, not on my family or husband — as it should have — and by all appearances did, but actually, I secretly longed for the day of my appointment every month. It was a constant comfort in my life. Then the possibility of fertility ends, albeit slowly, a faucet whose pipes begin to clog through years of slow disuse and then finally, the flow stops. When that day comes, the mikvah ends. No more floating in the quiet womb-like gentleness of a private pool.

I wasn’t prepared for my unexplainable grief of losing those brief moments of unconditional love. The first few months I was listless and sad inside, but no one really noticed because I fulfilled all my familial duties with reliability. It had been the water that kept me flowing through the boredom of this life that now seemed even more so because the children were fledged. They had looked at my observancy as a weakness, just as my husband had regarded it with relief. They had no idea how far I traveled without them while I floated, supposedly reciting the texts but, in actuality, reveling in dreams I held without expectation, places I knew I’d never visit and lovers I’d never know.

It had never occurred to me to frequent the local pool. Ours was not a swimming family. The time off that vacations represented could only be spent visiting other relatives. My sisters didn’t share the ritual with me, but I sought out local mikvahs. One I remember particularly was a windowless concrete block building behind a small post office. It looked like a storage room, instead of its secret purpose. Once let in by the attendant, I assured her how clean I was, from top to bottom. Fingernails, hair, teeth, tongue, and all small crevices. To get clean, you had to be clean. Then I walked down those seven steps into the bath. I remember emerging into the dusk in a nondescript parking lot with a dumpster adjacent to my car. How ironic, I thought, that such a sacred place for women would be tucked away next to the trash. Now, many years later, I hear that these new mikvahs are spa-like, tiled and with amenities. Still, while I walked to my car that day, I smiled contentedly.

The first time at the public pool was disorienting. So many naked women in the dressing room. At the mikvah, it’s only you and the very discreet attendant. So much jolly laughter and talking! Such skin-tight suits. Mine was balloon-like, with a skirt. My cap, a leftover in the attic from summer camp, was a tight helmet with decorative ridges in the rubber. It ripped and fell apart after the first swim. But I was determined to have water in my life.

I learned that one doesn’t float in the community pool but actually swim. My stroke was quite awful, head bobbing like a gourd while my arms tried to find a rhythm in order to move forward. But in the strange chlorinated humidity, the masses of people swimming in a library-quiet atmosphere, I felt not only a buoyant joy but also a camaraderie of souls who must feel that same solace in the nonresistance of water, in a world where there is so much resistance.

Here’s the crazy part. You can go every day. Talk about enabling. My husband questioned this new “thing,” not relating mikvah, water, swimming. Of course, mikvah has nothing to do with swimming, so why should he? It didn’t have any correlation for me either. It is all about the water.

I’ve purchased a better suit now with goggles, a silicon cap, and earplugs. My body has taken a new shape. There are no recitations before I jump into the water. No one checks to see if I’ve actually showered. The water is deep and clear, sunbeams cast light shows refracted in the water. There is the reverential silence accompanied by muted splashing from dedicated lap swimmers. We don’t talk. I don’t know if others are swimming because of the weightlessness; the grace the body attains when it is utterly supported; the simple joy it brings. It seems inconceivable that they are not, perhaps they are without knowing it.

I have been cleansed enough. The water still holds me, but I no longer have to wait for ritual permission to immerse myself. I don’t expect the water to change my life, and I don’t escape from life in the water. It simply is, as am I. ◀

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My Life in Water | Writing Contest - Santa Fe New Mexican
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