Immersion

I must have used the right word to describe myself—shattered? Whatever it was, it inspired Hollis to ask, “How do you feel about rituals?” Purifying baths … healing … wholeness … “Why not? What do I have to lose?” and with those dispassionate words, I dryly dipped my proverbial toe into what my apathy saw as an illusion of cleansing waters. I was to go to the Jewish bath, the mikveh, and Hollis would arrange it and go with me. I knew nothing of what it meant for her to go with me. Into the water? Naked? Dunking my head? Bathing me? All things were possible because what seems imaginary can also seem limitless.

Purification from what? Healing from what? I now can see that my sorrow was another body of water I had been soaking in, but it was stale and still, like a glacial kettle pond. Perhaps the first collection, the grief of losing my mother, had run silky and clear like meltage from some delicate mountain, worthy of splashing its cold clarity onto my face. But the pond had soon become crowded by debris—murky, impenetrable, a swampy seepage of grievances.

There were polluting streams from the death of an old friend my age, my father withdrawing into damaged silence and dependency, a child forming inside me and then dying and expelling itself, my living child maturing and refusing my touch, and finally the menacing rivulets of cancer settling in my uterus, the offending organ removed from my body, but leaving me skittish and winded. These were the waters I was soaking in, with unfathomably heavy limbs, impossible to move through with any grace.

Since Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, my thoughts had been swirling around the concept of T’shuvah—returning, atonement, returning, atonement—and I had started to feel an essential truth that whatever would bring me balance, unity, contentment, was already inside of me, to be found, to be returned to, if only I could swim the gulf of self‑recrimination and regret. So there was already a little readiness, but I read up on the mikveh website to get a fuller picture of what it really meant to make oneself ready.

If ever there was proof that reading about something on the web brings no insight into the reality you’re investigating, this was it. I tried to envision myself cleaning under my nails, emptying my bladder, scrubbing my callouses as part of some sacred process; I imagined myself slowly walking down the seven steps into the water but was obstructed by the image of Hollis walking down them right behind me, seeing my naked posterior for the first time. So the holiness wasn’t coming to me. I tried to believe that something would transport me, fill me with meditative focus so that none of these banalities would interfere. I can grasp now that the purification doesn’t come from keeping your mind pure and uncluttered through the whole process, it comes from simply having gone through the process. Period. Your mind is the same, still thinking its thoughts, but the housing is different, the soul has expanded and the body has released itself, just a little, from its past.

We met up on the appointed day—I had tried to tell Hollis she didn’t need to come with me, still thinking of us awkwardly standing naked together in lukewarm water—but it meant too much to both of us for her not to be there. And the story she told me before we entered the building, of how she had been refused access to a mikveh before her wedding, provided me with perspective about how different this place was, and what it would be like to have the longer tradition of the mikveh’s rigidity and disapproval as your frame of reference.

She showed me the bench honoring women who had found refuge there from abusive homes, she showed me the pool collecting rainwater, and she seamlessly brought me into a state of loving where I was before anything had even happened. It is important to love where you are, the sky, the leaves, the light, the voices, the possibility of having a quiet snack after you’ve had your spirit and body made whole. Hollis was there to remind me of that, to teach me that, since it might well be that I didn’t know it fully before.

She had said that she pretty much liked all the mikveh ladies at Mayyim Hayyim, and our “lady,” Leah, was also quick to say that one revolutionary element put into place there was that everyone was nice. What was there not to be nice about? But then I was in the preparation room, reading my instructions, removing all impurities and obstacles, and I started to imagine the vigilant eyes of an embittered attendant watching me and critiquing my thoroughness. This image actually made me hurry, so I was done with the steps of exfoliating, flossing, scrubbing in no time. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I knew I had missed something. I had read the readings, I had paused at intervals, I had proceeded, but I hadn’t enjoyed.

I started again. I got back in the bathtub and ran the water over me to feel it, to picture it washing away particles and flakes. I massaged my scalp and soaked my head. I spread my toes and found creases I never knew about. Out of the tub, I flossed and brushed again, staying with each tiny episode not so much to get that tooth or that space cleaner, but to feel its presence, to know it was there. I attended to my ears, I looked up my nose. I might have been removing small physical barriers, but of greater significance was the barrier I was removing by allowing a different type of time to evolve—I was exploring a limited environment the way a baby would, as though it was the whole world.

I wrapped in the sheet and dialed #200 on the phone to say I was ready. Hollis and Leah came in with my laminated document for meditations and instructions. It turned out they were going to stay fully clothed. They took the sheet from around me and held it up to create a screen so I could walk down the steps into the water in total privacy. I felt the base of my foot on each step. Once in the water, I turned a large spigot to allow some of the outside rainwater to come in, living water “kissing” the warm water of the pool. I felt its coolness and movement as it gushed in and I allowed it to push me backward a bit. The stone tiles around me were comforting, forgiving, and sunlight poured through the windows high above in the echoing chamber.

It wasn’t until I read the prayer before the first immersion, stating that I had come here to find healing for my body and spirit, that I realized I was there because something had been terribly wrong and that I was, in fact, seeking what these waters were meant to give. I rolled forward into the water, my feet left the ground, my head sank down, and, upon resurfacing, I heard the chorus of Hollis’s and Leah’s voices saying “Kasher”—they had watched me over the top of the sheet, I had done well, my hair had gotten fully submerged, I could go on. I laughed to myself, imagining the unforgiving little mikveh lady telling a cowed naked girl that it wasn’t right, she had to do it again. And again.

Before the second immersion, the meditation was on pain ceasing, finding strength, being surrounded by joy and, once again, I was surprised to find how much I wanted what was being offered. I spun forward, almost ravenous to feel the water around me. “Kasher” said my chorus as I emerged.

Then, for the third immersion, it was about relaxing, being surrounded and held—a person could be very ill, weak, forlorn, and if all they were able to do was soften into the embrace of this water, that would be enough. I floated and slowly turned. I was worried I hadn’t gotten fully immersed, my movement was so quiet, and I had stayed under so long, I didn’t hear them when I came back up. “Was it OK?” I asked and they said boisterously “Kasher!”

Leah asked if I wanted to stay there alone for a bit. I did. I was overcome by the clarity of the steps I had taken, that had been taken for me—to acknowledge the need to heal, to seek wholeness, to ask the pain and fear to cease, to let strength and happiness enter, and to find release, to find peace. Is it automatic that tears will blend with the waters of immersion? It seemed so, and the salty taste that dripped onto my lips seemed more my own than it had before.

I didn’t know whether they’d come back to get me, so I stood in the water a little longer, looking up at the rays of light coming through the windows. Nobody came so I got out, walked slowly and solidly up the seven steps, wrapped in my sheet and went back into the preparation room, which was now a room through which I returned to reality. A reality of clothes and mirrors and combs, lotion, deodorant. A reality of finding a testy note from the neighboring synagogue left on Hollis’s windshield warning her that she was parked illegally. A reality of deciding what the best and most convenient lunch options were.

Many things were said over lunch as Hollis and I debriefed, many insights and questions were poured over, but most resonant was my new-found clarity that this transcendence, this renewal, didn’t depend upon fiercely clinging to mindfulness, trying to keep the troubling facets of my life outside of my consciousness. As a yogi wannabe, a feeble meditator, I’ve been prone to berating myself for allowing toxic or shallow thoughts to intrude upon my moments of enlightenment. In fact, the central intention of my recent meditative practice has been to release my mind from that very self-criticism. Layers upon layers of tortured, complicated seeking, grasping at fleeting encounters with clarity as though they were, well, liquid cupped in my hands. But here was something that was simply there, a permanent part of me, a measure that had been taken. This was water that stayed lapping around me, and I didn’t have to do anything to keep it with me. Except remember it.

That night, my son Ezra came home from a class late and it seemed, while we were sitting at the kitchen table together, that we wouldn’t have the energy to do the 10 minutes of daily Hebrew study we had committed to. “Well, maybe we could do just one chapter,” I said, and he only protested a little. One chapter flowed into another and another, and soon we had decided to finish the book. It was past midnight when we had gotten to the “Congratulations!” page, but we each felt the urge to put our new expertise to use by writing something out. I laboriously shaped the letters for what I thought would be just a line or two of the Mourner’s Kaddish, but one line drifted slowly into another and another, and soon the whole thing was there, crooked and misspelled like a child’s work. And there was something else childlike and unfamiliar—I was proud of this product, nothing else, just proud.

The next day, I took a walk through Lawrence Woods in the late afternoon, the ground crunching beneath my feet and sun streaming in across the foliage. I sent a text message to Hollis—“How do you say ‘light’ in Hebrew?” and she responded right away—“Or”. I think I’ll ask her the word for “floating.”