Ben and Jerry's and G-d

It was late.

I was cold.

The aparment was a mess.

Dinner was not ready.

The kids were in bed, but still up and making ten last requests a second.

Oh, who am I kidding?

I was riding on a wave of pregnancy hormones when Outdoorsman asked me something terribly provoking, like, do you want me to help with dinner?

Flames shot out of my blood-dripping eyes and talons grew from my fingernails. Fur sprouted. Jaws elongated. I growled with my new long, dripping tongue, "You think that I'm a horrible housewife, and also ugly and fat, and if you hate me so much, why did you marry me anyway?!"

He said something like no no, you are wonderful and beautiful and perfect, darling,and I am so sorry for thinking that you might like some help, and backed away slowly, as one should do when faced with a rabid animal.

So I burst into tears and said something like, It's late, I'm cold, the apartment is a mess, the kids are in bed but still up and making ten last minute requests a second.

He said yes dear, of course dear, would you like some ice-cream dear? And bought Ben and Jerry's Cookies 'n Cream, which costs around a shekel a spoon-full.

I have been thinking lately about women's mitzvos versus men's. (and I am allowed to change the topic at random because I am PREGNANT. Also, it will all tie together so brilliantly in the end, it will take your breath away. Or else.) How we do not have any of the positive commandments mandated. How I always learned that we don't need all that, we are somehow purer, above it.

I never felt purer, or above it. I was never really satisfied with what seemed to be the pat answers to my indignant questions. ("thank G-d that I was not made a woman?" Dude! Cold. Why can't be both just be "happy that G-d made us who we are?")

So I decided to work backwards, to understand.

What is the goal, the same goal that all of us have, even if we have to take different roads to get there? I asked myself in saner, cooler, post-feminist days.

Of course, it is to have a relationship with Hashem.

How can we go about doing that?

By really understanding whatever it is our human minds can grasp about Who Hashem is.

What can we know about Him? We can repeat His Attributes, but they are only parables. We can't know what He is like. We can only really know that He is in control of the world, and we are not.

Ah.

So it's not about being purer, maybe. Maybe it's about simply being one step closer to that Truth.

It's really so unsettling, what happens to us women, I thought as my spoon hit the bottom of the Cookies 'n Cream container. And not only when pregnant. We are ruled by our cycles. The hormone flow is something that men can never really understand. It's like being possessed. It's like not being in control of who we are.

It's like--like not being in control.

It's like--women, intrinsically knowing that Someone else is in control.


Edited to add: Incidentally, after buying the ice-cream, Outdoorsman rigged an old music box to a cabinet in the kitchen. Now, whenever I open the cabinet door, it plays music. This has nothing to do with this post, except to add that my husband knows how to tame a beast.