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G's Bris was fairly traumatic for everyone. A mere 8 fresh days after giving birth, I was to surrender him to a mohel (actually, we had a female - mohelet) and subject him to some minor surgery.
We had agonized for ages over this decision, researching, weighing the pros and cons of circumcision, secularism vs. cultural identity. You know the deal. Or do you?
In the end, we had a great doctor who numbed him in 3 different ways, operated very quickly, and who gave a lovely service: we all survived.
Before leaving, she showed us how to care for him over the next few days, and handed us a piece of gauze in a plastic bag. We looked up, disoriented: What is that?
"It's his foreskin. bury it."
But was the middle of a frozen winter. Where could we dig a hole? How long did we have?
Every few months we come across that piece of gauze in plastic, containing - though we have never actually peered between the gauzy layers - a tiny foreskin.
And we have the discussion.
"Should we bury it in the back yard?" - but we don't own this house. I don't want to drive past here years from now, and think "hey, that's the tree where we buried the foreskin.
"How about the potted plant? It has survived for a few years now." - A plant? that's weird. It's like saving your scabs in a mason jar.
"We could throw it into lake Ontario" - That's not really burying it.
So basically, after a ceremony we were never 100% sure that we wanted, we ended up with another issue of ceremony - or lack thereof - on our hands. I'm leaning towards the potted plant.
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2.20.2009
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