Do you have a safety pin? Rolling pin? A bowling pin?

MY

husband’s aunt is lovely. A fine woman whom I get along with well. When I sit with her at simchahs, I love the stories she shares, the advice she dispenses, the lens she sees the world through.

But next week, she’s coming to my apartment.

She’s coming to town on Monday for a Tuesday wedding, and her side is making sheva brachos on Thursday and then she’s going to Shabbos sheva brachos, so she’ll be in my apartment until Friday. She really is a lovely woman, but we only have one shower, and she can make herself invisible as well as an elephant can.

I’m talking to my oldest friend, venting about first-world problems like having only one shower in my comfortable apartment, and that my husband comes from a large, warm family.

She validates and listens just enough that I start to take it back.

“I really do like her,” I say. “I like her, and I’m happy she feels comfortable coming to us. It’s just not easy. You know?”

“It’s avodas hamiddos,” my friend asserts, gently putting me in my place. “And that’s what we’re here for. Right?”

I agree, of course.

Of course I agree. I know that that’s what life is all about.