The Magical Rainbow Bridge

I recently had a conversation with someone who was having a problem. He/she (they know what their gender is, I just don't want to tell you. I would say they but they don't identify as a they. As a grammar nerd I'M LOSING MY MIND IN 2021) was wondering at what point in their life would they be walking and a rainbow bridge would appear and they would cross it and appear on the other side ready to be married.

Have you not heard of the rainbow bridge?

For me it was November of my 19th year, a month out from 20, dead Scorpio season. I was coming home from Fairway where I had done my shopping and made the terrible choice of buying pickles which are very heavy to carry for the 7.5 blocks home. As I struggled, I stopped for a moment on a stoop and looked down to catch my breath.

When I looked back up, the rainbow bridge was in front of me, invisible to everyone else on 69th street. It was my time to be like Mario and Luigi and make my way across the rainbow road. When I stepped off the rainbow and it immediately disappeared, no time had passed. It was like Lucy Pevensie and her sibling's forays into Narnia-when they left, Jews were being murdered in the holocaust and when they returned 20 years later, Jews were still being murdered in the holocaust.

But, though the world had not changed, I was a changed woman.

While standing on the rainbow bridge I had gotten all the knowledge I would ever need to be a wife. I learned the secret difference between men and women and how to bridge that gap. I learned a secret woman trick for making childbirth not hurt but still making your husband think it hurts so he fulfilled his mitzvah of making his wife suffer for Chava's sin. I learned the recipe for the perfect potato kugel. As soon as I got home I rested my sore wrist (from the pickle weight) and called a shadchan and let her know that I had crossed the rainbow road.

Unfortunately, I jest.

There is no rainbow bridge, there is no tooth fairy, there is no santa clause and there is no Queen of England #megamind.

Instead, each person must decide for his or her or theirself (I'm kidding! Gosh!) when they are ready to get married.

You might be like me and decide you are ready at 20. Then, 6.5 years of fruitlessly dating 47 men later, you might have a conversation with someone or deal with a nagging problem in your life that makes you conclude: There it is. Now I'm ready for marriage.

Honestly, each time I call a doctor to set up an appointment without my mommy's help I think that I'm probably ready to be a grandmother.

But some people do decide at 19 or 18 or 17 that they are good enough at making potato kugel to also make a human being and then they get married and immediately make a potato kugel and a human being.

I guess those are the people who don't need to have tough conversation and have no nagging problems. I have a hypothesis that married people have no problems and I though there is lots of evidence to the contrary, I am a good scientist who will not believe the evidence until I have done the experiment myself.

There are many schools of thought that suggest the holidays of Sukkos and Pesach are in themselves rainbow bridges. When a single person who is of marriageable age crosses through one of these holidays, they come out the other side ready to date. It's why we have hoshanas on succos and split the sea on Pesach-it adds a visual to the rainbow bridge.

I hope that I'm never ready to get married. I hope that I continue to deal with every nagging problem until I am perfect and have all the conversations until I reach a level of nirvana that only Taylor Swift has achieved.

But I would like to get married in the meantime, even if I'm not ready. Someone let the boys know, I crossed the rainbow bridge.