But first, dear reader, some context.
A few months ago, I was privileged to take the stage with some powerhouse women— Odessa Settles, Taylor Leonhardt, and Leslie Greathouse. The four of us, through song and storytelling, were participating in an event called Eve’s Memoir. The brainchild of our visionary producer, Ashley Bayne, this event created space to imagine what it might have felt like for the first woman on earth, Eve, to experience all the things women have experienced ever since. We covered everything from marriage, to motherhood, to mansplaining. There were some holy moments. There were some poignant moments. And then, well, there were moments like what you’ll read below. I hope you enjoy.
Disclaimer: no squirrels were harmed in the writing of this post.
On the Creation of Pants
One afternoon, it was two, maybe three months after Adam and I were exiled from our home, we were out toiling.
Again.
Digging, sweating, hoeing in that measly scrap of a garden we’d scratched into the ground. We’d been out here since daybreak, tending this soil.
About midday, Adam dropped his hoe, grabbed his club, and said he’d spend the rest of the afternoon hunting if I didn’t mind finishing up these last few dozen rows without him.
Oh, I minded.
I was hot and sweaty, peckish with an empty belly. I’ve noticed there’s a certain churlishness which comes over me when I’m surviving on nothing but thistles and roots and woe.
So, yes, I minded a great deal.
But another thing I’ve noticed is that ever since I handed Adam that apple, I’ve been living with the uneasy sense I need to make amends.
I could never tell Adam this, of course. I know what he’d say. He’d say we’d both made the decision to take that bite. He’d say he won’t let me keep carrying all the blame. I know what Adam would say, because he’s said it before. He’s said it so many times it makes me think he’s making amends for something, too.
There’s plenty of blame to go around. We both acted like jackasses that night, pointing and blaming and stammering. As if God didn’t know exactly what we’d been up to. I cringe remembering how ridiculous Adam and I must have looked, crouching there in the bushes.
The sun is setting. I decide to call it for the day.
When I reach home, I find Adam sitting on a rock near our shelter. Next to him is the biggest pile of dead squirrels I’ve ever seen.
I prop my hoe against a tree, and eyeing the squirrels, I ask, “What are you doing, Adam?”
He replies, “Sewing some pants.”
“Pants?” I ask.
“Yep,” he says.
Clearly, Adam has been naming things again.
I want to ask him what pants are, but I feel stupid asking. Instead, I ask, “How’d you catch so many squirrels?”
He says, “I covered my body with peanut butter and lay down on the ground. When a squirrel got close enough, I hit it with my club.”
“Huh. How long did it take you?” I ask.
“Couple hours,” he says.
My husband has been lying on the ground covered in peanut butter while I’ve been working my hands to blistery, bloody nubs in the heat of the day.
I want to remind him that the blisters, the sweat of the brow, that was all supposed to be his part of the curse, not mine.
Instead, I ask, “All that work just to make pants?”
He looks at me blankly, not reading between the lines.
Adam is really good at some stuff. Like naming things. Show him something, anything, and he’ll name it. But he’s really not good at reading between lines. He looks like an animal who smells a trap, though.
“I can make you a pair, too,” he offers in a conciliatory tone.
In this moment, I have a choice to make.
I could choose in this moment to be grateful. I could choose to be thankful for this man who has taken the initiative to make pants, and has spent a whole day luring small woodland mammals to their doom.
But I don’t choose gratitude. No, I don’t choose it at all. I choose instead, like Adam, to create something new. Something never before seen on earth.
I create passive aggression.
“Sure, hon, that’d be swell, I’d love some pants,” I say, grinning tightly.
I am scrupulously polite as I prepare dinner. Any moment, he’ll crack, I think. He’ll realize his mistake. He’ll apologize for letting me do all the work while he dawdled the day away murdering squirrels.
Turns out, Adam’s not good at picking up on passive aggression either. He just sits there on his rock, shucking squirrels like corn.
I sigh, and dice some of the fresh rodent into my stew. We eat, and the squirrel tastes divine. With a full belly, I realize I’m not as angry as I was. I decide to forgive Adam for the thing he doesn’t know he did.
A few days pass. Though I don’t see Adam working on his pants, I’m sure he is; he’s wearing that little smirk he puts on when he’s proud of himself about something.
And then one afternoon, I hear Adam give a sigh of deep disappointment. He emerges from the bushes, and he’s wearing a garment which covers his legs from the waist to the ankles. These must be pants, I think. The pants are stitched together with a disconcerting number of squirrel-shaped patches.
“Your pants look fantastic,” I tell him.
He says, “No, they don’t.”
“Seriously, they look great,” I say.
“No, Eve, they don’t. Because these aren’t pants,” he says.
“Oh. What are they, then?” I ask.
At this, he turns around.
From this posterior perspective, I have a full view of Adam’s buttocks shining in the sun.
“Turns out,” he says, “it takes a lot of squirrels to make pants.”
It would be another couple of months before the squirrel population replenished enough for Adam to finish sewing his pants. It didn’t stop him from wearing what he’d already made. He named them assless chaps.
The day finally came when he put the finishing touches on his pants. I’ve got to admit, I missed what they’d been before. Adam looked magnificent from behind.
But more, it dawned on me the pants were another layer of separation between us. A separation which grew wider with every stitch, with every sharp word, every angry intake of breath.
Layer by layer, we clothed ourselves, covered ourselves, hid ourselves from the other’s view. We covered our bodies as our only protection against this deeper exposure.
Though we would learn to exist within this tension of what once was and what now is, Adam and I would spend many long years hiding our hurting places from each other.
I wish we’d never taken that bite in the first place, but if I can’t undo that choice, I wish we’d seen how unnecessary it was to hide from each other. I wish we’d known how much stronger we are together, even with the wounds we both carry.
This is GOLD! I was laughing so hard. Great thoughts at the end too!
This is so clearly clever and captured me. I love a new perspective.