Will less-than-pristine clothing send a longtime relationship down the drain?

Shifra: All I wanted was to get my things back the way I lent them to you.

Goldy: If you’re so particular about your things, why did you lend them out?

Shifra

The text came in at 4:52 a.m. I saw it two hours later.

It’s a GIRL!!!!

“Aaaaahhh!” I whisper-shrieked. Heshy cracked open one eye, quizzically. “Goldy had a girl!”

“Mazel tov,” he mumbled, and rolled back over.

Men!

I sat up in bed, too excited to go back to sleep. Finally, a girl after four boys! I’d have to make something beautiful for the kiddush of course, maybe those strawberry petit fours. And I’d send over balloons and a gift. Some pink stretchies, or an adorable dress… this was going to be so much fun.

Goldy and I have been best friends since finishing high school. We met in seminary and hit it off right away, and landed teaching jobs in the same school after graduating. When we moved to the same neighborhood after getting married, we thought we had it all planned out. We’d bring up our families together, and our kids would be best friends too. But I have mostly girls and Goldy — until today — had only boys, so that didn’t work out so well.

Still, between hosting each other for Shabbos meals and our twice-weekly power walks, not to mention the endless text messages and phone calls, we stayed close. While our lifestyles diverged — Heshy went into real estate a few years back, and we’d recently bought a beautiful house, while Goldy’s husband was still in kollel and they were crowded into a small rental apartment — it didn’t change things for us.

I was grateful for our good fortune, and whenever I could, I looked for opportunities to help Goldy out a little.

So when she replied to my mazel tov message asking for a favor, I really wanted to say yes.

Just wondering, do you happen to have any of Vivi’s baby clothes that I can borrow? Realized I’m gonna need a whole new wardrobe for this one 🙂

I bit my lip. A new baby meant new clothing, and that meant lots of expenses. Stretchies and rompers, outfits and bonnets and adorable frilly socks…

But.

I padded out of the room to my linen closet. There on the top shelf was my baby clothing, organized by size and season: 0-3 months, girls, spring / summer; 0-3 months, girls, autumn / winter. Box after clear plastic box with matching labels and perfectly neat handwriting stared back at me.

I should just say yes, I thought. It’s all beautiful clothing, perfect condition, mostly designer… She would love it, there was no way she could afford a baby wardrobe like this. It sounded like she was struggling to afford a baby wardrobe at all.

But then I thought of Goldy’s house. Lots of noise, lots of mess, lots of energy. Her four boisterous boys, running in all directions, scuffed shoes and rips by the knees of their pants. We always joked that Hashem knew what He was doing, giving me a houseful of docile girls and Goldy the male contingent. She had a laid-back, spontaneous, go-with-the-flow approach to life and this amazing ability to turn a blind eye when the floors got messy or her boys turned up with live frogs in plastic containers.

Goldy kept her baby clothing, too — probably all lumped together in a cardboard box in a corner of the bedroom. She doesn’t have much space in that apartment. But all that baby clothing wouldn’t help her now, not for a brand-new little princess.

Lending her my clothing would be the absolute best gift I could give. Besides, she’d asked, and I didn’t want to refuse her. Still, I winced.