The Red Tent

This week I felt my age and lot in life.  On Thursday I was speeding in my mini-van trying to get my hot home-made breakfast casserole to a "mother's group" on time.  I know, I know, I just said mini-van, casserole, and mother's group all in the same sentence. But this group is good for me, it's full of the type of women that I am slightly embarrassed to tell that I had never made a breakfast casserole before.  They also do daily things like praying the rosary and always seem to know what Novena is good for what.  And I nod along like, "Oh, of course you say the Novena to St. Rita of Cascia when you need personal courage!" And all this is good for me, I need a little of these women in my life.  I need to see women who handle their children's cancer, take on foster kids, and bake bread all while homeschooling like it's as easy as breathing.  And if I did say a Novena to St. Rita and actually had the courage to tell these ladies that I hadn't ever made a breakfast casserole before, they would whip out their day-planners and binders and start passing me their best organic recipes without an eye-roll.  I love it, it keeps me balanced.

Well, every group session starts with a group prayer, and every person is supposed to say out loud what they would like the group to pray for.  This part, I hate.  I am not a good group prayer person and always feel like I have to make up something important and meaningful to pray for.  But I was late this time (you know, making a casserole) and they were almost done with the group prayer.  I sat down relieved that I had missed my turn until the group leader said, "Leah, you can go now." Ugh. I asked for prayers for my husband to have an easier time with his job and then I considered making up a marriage problem or ailment but all I could think of was that I just saw another penis two days ago. So, I told them all that I had just found out that my fourth child would be a fourth boy and I would like to ask God to help me appreciate that.  Everyone nodded solemnly like I had just prayed for someone in hospice care and they closed the prayer.

Today we had a play date birthday party for my little guy.  He turned two this week.  Friends from Boston, Greg and Jess were in attendance.  Along with David's gift, Jess handed me a present as well.  After the play date party was over and the guests had left, I reached my hand inside the gift bag and pulled out a book.  I saw the woman on the cover and my heart stopped.  "The Red Tent" someone whispered in my mind.  It was me whispering from the past, 12 years ago, in college and I had just finished the book. 

I double majored in college. Gov-Law and Religion.  Most of my religion courses where taken in "Jewish Studies".  I am fascinated with Judaism and basically have had a love affair with it since the time I was 10 and picked up my first Chaim Potok fiction.  Judaism is everything I love about religion and studying it made me love and understand my own Catholicism more.  Most of my courses had to do with the Old Testament or the Jewish experience in history.  I even had one heart wrenching course on human suffering and forgiveness dealing mostly with the Holocaust and reading Elie Wiesel.  I left that class feeling shell shocked and tired and scared that there was something inside of me that I did not know.

Then I took a cross-over course dealing with women in literature, and that's where I  first saw the cover of "The Red Tent".  I was excited to read it.  I loved the biblical story of Leah and Rachel and all the sons they had and Leah's one daughter, Dinah. But "The Red Tent" turned out to be an emotional roller coaster for me and I didn't want to buy another ticket too soon.  It starts out with the story of my name-sake and continues with a fictional account of the life her only daughter, "Dinah" might have had.  Dee-nah... Dee-nah... I can hear her saying her own name.  The name is as soft as music and as powerful as a scream.  I haven't opened the book since.  I remember seeing it catch on and end up on best-seller lists, I remember noticing it in the check-out line at Target and pretending that I didn't see it. "Dee-nah" the book said to me.  "I don't know you", I said and turned away.

One of my favorite nerd authors, George Martin, in his book "A Dance with Dragons" wrote, “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.” I couldn't re-live Dinah's fictional life in 12 years.  Now, I open the book to Dinah's voice in the prologue.  One passage reads:

     "My mother's were proud to give my father so many sons.  Sons were a woman's pride and measure.  But the birth of one boy after another was not an unalloyed source of joy in the women's tents.  My father boasted about his noisy tribe, and the women loved my brothers, but they longed for daughters, too, and complained among themselves about the maleness of Jacob's seed.
     Daughters eased their mothers' burdens - helping with the spinning, the grinding of grain, and the endless task of looking after baby boys, who were forever peeing into the corners of the tents, no matter what you told them.
    But the other reason women wanted daughters was to keep their memories alive.  Sons did not hear their mothers' stories after weaning.  So I was the one.  My mother and mother-aunties told me endless stories about themselves.  No matter what theirs hands were doing- holding babies, cooking, spinning, weaving - they filled my ears.
     In the ruddy shade of the red tent, the menstrual tent, they ran their fingers through my curls, repeating the escapades of their youths, the sagas of their childbirths.  Their stories were like offerings of hope and strength poured out before the Queen of Heaven, only these gifts were not for any god or goddess-but for me."

The rest of the book is not easy.  Dinah gives birth to her own sons and her love and experiences with motherhood are painful and wonderful.  The book is rough for me, the want of a daughter and the love and blessings of sons, the trials and tribulations of womanhood, motherhood, midwifery.  The book feels earthy and ancient, transporting the reader back to a primal time.  The beauty of the novel is hard and painful, just like the beauty of the red tent itself.  I close the book.  "Dee-nah" it whispers.  "Yes. I know you." I reply with wet eyes.

For every pregnancy, I'd have had to mourn the idea of a daughter even just a little.  I want my Dinah but I also am Dinah.  For every lost memory un-shared with a daughter is the very present and cherished memory made with a son.  I have four chances to make lots of memories and leave sons that will appreciate and love their possible wives and daughters.  That will be the gift I leave for posterity.  I may be forgettable blip in the family tree just like Dinah's short paragraph life in the bible.  My story may not be passed down on the lips of my daughters, but my son's lives will echo my
name in their lives and lives they create.

Two nights ago I was walking down a dark hall in my house and my teenage son came up behind me and scared me.  I shrieked and then laughed.  "James! You can't scare a pregnant lady!  I just pee'd in my pants!"  "Oh my God! That is so gross"  He choked as he doubled over in laughter.  My other two boys joined in dancing around and laughing at Mommy peeing her pants. I even felt the little boy in my womb wiggle.  Ah, my boys and our memories, what would I do without them?  The tent I create with my sons may not be red but it is definitely colorful.