A Missed "Coming Out" Moment?

A friend once heard me describe the experience of acknowledging to my mikveh lady that I was a rabbi (and my relief when she was not disapproving), and called it coming out.   I'd never heard the term applied to anything other than telling someone about your sexual preferences before, but I'll take the broadening of the term.

The week before my wedding, I had a similar sort of experience with a mikveh lady- except that I botched it.  The particular mikveh lady who "did kallahs" (and was really very lovely, helpful, and everything you want a mikvah lady to be) in my hometown offered an hour-long shmooze sometime before the actual immersion.  During that time, while she was trying to inspire me about mikveh and offered me a chance to talk about last-minute questions and worries, I brought up that I would like to have a shmatta for my bracha- although I knew that customarily, brides didn't use one (contradicting my sense that such a covering is more kippah-like than marriage-linked, as I suggested in this previous post.)

I explained that I had grown up in a non-Orthodox community, and that women frequently covered their heads for prayer, and that, because of that, I didn't feel comfortable without covering my head when making blessings.  I didn't say that I was still "not Orthodox".  She saw that I came there with a small kerchief on my head, but I don't know what assumptions she made.  Something about it left me feeling a little bit dishonest, for all that I never quite lied- I just didn't tell all the truth.

It was a sort of obscuring of my identity that I could rarely do- and never when I wore an actual kippah.  Sometimes I longed for such a way to hide, when I didn't feel like explaining myself.  Now, I blend in as Orthodox all too easily.  Maybe that's why I now feel as if I oughtn't do so.  And yet, there's such a desire to hide...

My Head and The Mikveh

I've put a thing of some sort on my head for brachot for years.  And then I got married, and started going to the mikveh.  One makes a bracha in the mikveh, so of course, I ask for the shmatta (rag/cloth) they keep for the purpose, beforehand.  I've just gone along with a general sense of consistency.

However, it's been brought up that there are other differences.  In other words, I am not usually otherwise naked while making those other brachot.  Given that difference, does it still make any sense to cover my head?  Conceptually, the question is- are head-covering and body-covering related?

When it comes to real experience, I don't know if the theory matters.  I feel awfully strange about the idea of not having that shmatta there, for all that my body is covered in nothing but water.  I haven't looked at the halakhot yet, but for myself, the thought of carrying out an important mitzvah with a completely bare head just bugs me.

Maybe it's that covering my head has always had a spiritual component, for me, while covering my body has to do with other people.  My clothes aren't relevant to God, but having a head-covering is about acknowledging God's presence, and reminding myself of it.  It's about recognizing that God is watching.  In other words, that shmatta is a kippah, not an "I'm married" sign.  Maybe then, if that sort of head-covering wasn't part of your practice before, it doesn't feel so odd to make a bracha without it.  But for me, I really connect to that symbol.

How do you feel about it?