“Live each day as if it is your last,” say the rabbis. “Savor each immersion as it might be your last,” say those of us whose mikvah visits have begun to dwindle in mid-life. I came to this mitzvah twenty years or so into our marriage. I wanted to experience mikvah once before I moved through the change. Or before it moved through me. My husband, who over the years had followed me down a quite unexpected path toward a family life rich with Jewish expression, gave me the look. The one that said, “when have you ever been satisfied with doing any thing just once?” The look that said, “OK, just this once and then don’t ever bring it up again.” I promised. Just once.

Sometimes I think I’d like to write a book, If You Give a Mouse a Mitzvah. That’s kind of how it is with Jewish practice. You light Shabbos candles, bless the wine and do motzi so why not bless the kids, too? And the wife? And if you’re saying Motzi then why not say the blessing for handwashing before motzi? And why not build a sukkah? And if you build a sukkah you have to have the lulav and etrog, too. And if you’re doing all that and you happen to attend a class on mikvah, well....why not that, too? And if that one month was magical, then why not once more? We moved slowly. My third time the mikvah lady said, “Do a mitzvah three times and it’s part of your life.” And so it was for nearly a decade.

After a few years I realized I wasn’t just marking time by ticking off calendar boxes but by the length of my fingernails as well. Because cutting one’s nails is part of the preparation for immersion, as soon as they began getting in my way I knew where things stood with my cycle. Sure enough twelve or so days after I became conscious of them, I was once again in the quiet tiled room making my preparations for immersion in the mikvah. What an intimate signpost, I marveled. As I moved into menopause the moodiness, the sugar/salt/sugar/salt cravings and the tenderness all began falling by the wayside; my fingernails became an ongoing reminder of what had been, what I was losing along with all the rest. I trimmed my nails as they needed it, keenly aware that another month had passed with no visit to the mikvah. The irony hadn’t escaped me that just as I was losing my fertility my shape had begun to resemble the fleshy bounty of an Incan clay goddess, a voluptuousness maligned in this youth-covetous society.

Each time a mikvah visit was in order, I moved slowly. I prepared even more deliberately, soaking longer, not rushing through the blessing but enunciating each word as if it stood alone before immersing myself in the living waters. Baruch. Ata. Ado-shem. Elokaynu. Melech. HaOlam.......The water flowed through my fingers like time. Would this visit be my last? I walked up the seven steps slowly, feeling the pull of the water on my ankles. The mikvah lady obscured herself, holding my white terry robe before her like a floor to ceiling curtain. I slipped my arms into the sleeves, belted the robe and walked back to my room. “Be sure you cancel,” she said as she bid me goodnight. How many times had she reminded me to press the cancel button so that she would know my room’s occupant had completed her visit? Be sure you cancel. One more phrase that would lose relevance in my life at some unknown future date.

Was it the mikvah water that made my face so radiant? Or the imminent reunion with my husband? We had grown accustomed to loving on our own time schedule; this unexpected separation revived a dormant, but not unfamiliar urgency. No way of telling what next month will bring. Or what it won’t.

Of one thing I am certain. Sometime within the next two weeks or so I’ll begin to be aware of my fingernails. I’ll wait a few days before reaching for the manicure kit. Until I know if trimming them will be part of a ritual or simply the mundane act of removing that which is no longer needed.