A Freshly Fallen Snow

Maybe you won’t agree, but there are actually many good things about today. One thing is that I have a job. Another is that I have a few hundred dollars in savings. Also, my gash has healed nicely and the bruise has cleared up. People at the office have stopped asking why I didn’t get stitches after the car door slammed in my face. The blood stains came out of my pajama shirt. He wants to forget about it and move on; we’re back into our routine. The kids need lunch and snacks and to be picked up from dance and helped with algebra. It snowed last night and someone has to shovel the driveway.

I’m also trying not to end up bitter and angry. Slowly, slowly. Two steps forward and one step back. It helps to remember the good parts, the times the tears fell from joy, the times I bled only a shy sort of pride. To be sure, I won’t forget the way his arms felt as they pushed me into the wall, again and again. But I also won’t forget how these arms hugged me after a long day at work and how he rested his head on my shoulder and how warm and loved I felt. I will remember his anger and the gash on my chin, but I will also remember how he gently cups my face when he tries to sneak a kiss. I will never forget my daughter sobbing after he forced her head into a trash can, but I will also easily recall his tears as he held her all wrapped up in that baby-blankie the hospitals give you. Night falls, and as he sleeps I sit by the bed, ruffling my hand slowly through his soft curly hair. I know it’s wrong, all the self- help books and therapists will tell me to keep my dignity, but just now I want nothing more than the deceptive cocoon of his caress, his sweet embrace, his forgiveness. Like Facebook says, “It’s complicated.”

Filthy snow piled up on the New York City streets when I got engaged in the winter of 1996. I was ecstatic, though, and could care less. The red flags were there, but I ignored them. He yelled in anger at the previous tenant of an apartment we hoped to rent, a mousy, hunchbacked woman used to being screamed at by men. She didn’t take her mini-fridge with her on time, as she promised, and it was delaying our move-in date. She looked at me with a sort of confusion and sadness. Why was I marrying him? I was ashamed and thought about breaking it all off. He cried, he said he was sorry, he promised he would never treat me that way. It sounds ridiculous now, but I was 20 years old and that promise held value. It held potential and hope. And also I remembered Mirele, the classmate of mine who broke off an engagement with a bochur from a choshuve family, and I remembered how we looked at her with pity, knowing she would likely never have the chance for happiness again. At least not until she was an old-maid, off the shelf, not before 24 or 25. So I kept the engagement, and married a few months while later.

The criticisms started shortly after sheva brachos. Why wasn’t the silverware properly polished? Sloppy, disgusting. Why were there half-eaten fruits in the bedroom? Why did I always forget to pull the car into the garage and why didn’t I lock the doors at night? Don’t I know what kind of neighborhood this is? What am I thinking? Am I thinking? How many times does he have to tell me? Why can’t I just listen the first time? If only I’d pay attention, he wouldn’t have to get upset. Am I stupid or what?

Our children were born and as they grew older they learned to copy his mannerisms, his tone. My preteen son recently asked me where my brain was, what was I thinking. I am not a wimp, I’ll have you know. I stood up for myself more than once. This last time, I got in his face and told him he can’t call me stupid anymore, I won’t take it. He told me to get away, warned me really, and then I was slammed into the wall. It was my fault to some extent.

He was uber-frum, my husband, and I hated him for it. And so I amputated myself from all he stood for, slowly and methodically sawing through the flesh and bone and ligament binding me to God and community. The more pain, the better. I blamed our crises on frumkeit, the faulty shidduch system, the pressure to get married, the under-emphasis on middos, the ridiculous chumros. It was all God’s fault. If only I hadn’t worried about being the last girl in my seminary class to get married, I would have broken off this engagement. If only chassidus was really true, it would have made my husband a kinder and more sensitive man, one with more self-control and less anger. If only pretzels didn’t have to be pas-yisroel, he wouldn’t call me an idiot for buying pas akum, wouldn’t bang his fist on the table and yell so loud.

I met some different people recently. A neighbor, a friend’s husband. They have their faults, but a controlling temper is not one of them. Religion is a soothing presence in their home, a warm and comforting blanket. Avremel hugs his children and wrestles with them on the rug. Alex’s eyes light up when the kids show off a parshah arts and crafts made at school. They say “I love you,” to their wives, and they don’t worry about orange juice without a hechsher. It dawned on me that there is no chiyuv m’deoraisa to be an asshole. There is no mitzvah to smack your wife or scream at your kids. It’s a chumra maybe, one kept only by those teetering on the edge of our faith, those who risk the beauty of their families to placate an invisible, angry god.

These days I try to absolve my faith. Religion, I think, is nothing. It is a blank canvass, a freshly fallen snow. It is empty and beautiful and magical. Children run out and roll around in it, covering themselves head to toe, making snow-angels. Adults smile and laugh and drink hot chocolate. But eventually the people and the cars and the pollution turn the snow to thick gray-black mud. It becomes ugly and repulsive and we remember how cold it is and wonder when the thaw will come. And that is the nature of soft and fleeting snow — it lends itself to being sullied and made despicable. We could be angry at the snow, force it to be stronger, more resistant, to withstand the onslaught of humanity. But what’s the point? It’s just snow and I need to stop blaming the snow for the people who make it ugly.

Some people, and I’ve only met a few, are careful with the snow. They walk around it, they treat it with caution and respect. They think of the next wayfarer and whether she will love the snow as much as they do. One of them told me it’s assur to daven from a siddur. You have to pray only from the heart, and if you need a siddur to help, that’s okay too. These people seem sincere. I imagine that fake piety disgusts them. I used to laugh cynically, to seek their faults, to find happiness in the missteps they took when no one but me was looking. But now I treasure them, those who show us how snow can be clean, and soothing, a solid block of ice when we need its shelter. For them at least, if not for me. Too late for me.

I don’t know what I’ll do. Maybe I’ll sweep it all under the rug again and see if we can work things out. Try another round of therapy. Why not? Or maybe I’ll finally get it together and ask him to leave. If I do, maybe I should turn away and close my eyes as he leaves. So I don’t see how he tramples the freshly fallen snow.