It’s the scariest moment.

The house is ready for sponges and soap and buckets of water.

Once you spill you’re in. In the new world of Pesach of geulah of joy.

I always ask myself the same question before I start “sponga hagedolah” — What am I so afraid of?

After I spill gallons of water from the top of the house to the bottom and the house is sparkling and the joy is incomparable I ask myself “Why don’t I do this every week?”

I have a friend who teaches ladies who are afraid of water how to overcome their fears.

“What’s scary about water?” I ask her.

“It’s a completely different world” she says. “The arms and the legs and the respiratory system don’t work the same there.”

“What do the ladies who are afraid say?” I ask.

“They say they’re afraid to put their faces in the water.”

“Why?”

“The usual response is ‘Because I can’t breathe.’$$separatequotes$$”

“That’s a fact” I say with a tinge of challenge.

“It is” she agrees.

“So where do you go from there?” I ask understanding that their fear is a rational one.

She explains. “On land when you want to move forward you put your foot forward and you move in that direction. In water everything is the opposite. You push backward in order to move forward.”

Here my brain starts ticking. Wow that’s really a great mashal of how sometimes we have to push backward to go forward.

“It’s simple” she continues “but most people who are afraid don’t understand this. In water the rules they’re used to living by don’t work.”

Pause.

“For example on land if you drop your apple it falls to the floor. In water if you drop your apple it floats.”

“That may work for apples but I don’t think it works for humans” I challenge her again.

And she says “That’s not true.”

In the background her husband is saying “I don’t float.”

She laughs.

I get another mashal out of it in the meantime how if we don’t panic and just trust we float.

“And Torah’s compared to water” she throws in.

“How do you get the panic out?” I ask.

“I break apart the fear” she says matter-of-factly. “I explain that the body is like a seesaw. If you put your head in the water your feet go up. This helps because they get scared when their feet go up and they feel they’ve lost control.”

Pause.

“This is how it works in the water. Not only do I explain but I show them. You can’t be intellectually taught how to swim you have to experience it.”

Like you can’t explain the joy of love or Torah or geulah I think. 

And I think about this boy we met who didn’t have a mother lo aleinu. Once someone gave him some food for no reason. And he asked me “Why did she give to me? Does she have a need to nurture?”

“No” I said “she has 12 children of her own.”

And I thought How deep is the pain in that question to have to wonder why a mother wants to give.

This morning I called a friend to say “mazel tov” on her daughter’s engagement. 

She says “I can’t believe a little heart can hold so much joy.”

And I think This is so beautiful and so true. There are some things in life you can’t explain; you could never explain this joy unless you experience it. And I wanted to say I imagine her feet aren’t even touching the ground today. Sometimes this can be scary.

I think about fears and the water and the message the swim instructor teaches about how not to be afraid. I hear her saying “This is the nature of water; when your head goes under your feet go up.”

Torah’s compared to water.

The Red Sea split when we jumped in.

We don’t have to be afraid even when the water’s up to the nose.