“I have to buy boots for my Chedva ” Leyah tells her friend Henny on the phone. “I’m getting cold feet just thinking about it!”

“Oh? Why?”

“It’s guaranteed to be a push of the borders — if not because of the style then because of the price.”

“Oh yeah” Henny agrees. “I had that with my Dina. Still have it … ” she adds.

“So what do you do?”

“Well you can’t totally stunt their tastes like stamp out everything with a big ‘No’ can you?”

“No of course not.”

“But you can’t agree to everything or anything — that you don’t agree to.”

“Right. So tell me Henny … what do I do?”

“You know the exact same thing happened when I took Reuven shopping for his bar mitzvah suit.”

“Nu?”

“We saw this gorgeous suit and Reuven looked great in it. It fit perfectly. But it was dark blue — not black.”

“And … ?”

“And I said: ‘Reuven we wear black. And that suit’s blue.”

“And … ?”

“And he really wanted it. You know how when you’re in the store in the thick of it it’s hard to part with things?” She laughs. “So I said: ‘Reuven listen. Hashem will bless us to find the right suit — that fits both of us!”

“What a great line!”

“Isn’t it?”

“I love it! That line works. Do you have any others?”

“Yes. How about this one: ‘If I have to answer you now the answer is no. But if you let me think about it it could be a yes.’$$$separate quotes$$$”

“Great line!”

“That’s one of my favorites. It works every time. Like a charm.”

“Any others?”

“Of course I have others — but I can’t think of them on the spot. But actually that’s what good chinuch’s about all that learning so that you’ll have the good answer on the spot. Because sometimes there’s only that split second — and you have to be ready.”

“Okay Henny. Now I’m going to go to the stores with confidence!”

$$$skip line$$$

Leyah’s daughter Chedva meets her in town.

The first store they go into has the boots that Chedva loves.

Leyah considers: The front’s okay not too pointy. The small studs are bearable — and even somewhat tasteful. But the motorcycle driver chain hanging from the back is definitely over the border.

“They’re not for us” Leyah says with newfound wobbly confidence.

“But I love them!” Chedva says.

“Let’s look around. This is only the first store” Leyah says reasonably.

“But I already know!” Chedva says. She’s still got the boots on her feet. “These are it.”

“If I have to answer you now — the answer is definitely no. But if I think about it it could be a yes.”

Leyah thinks about it about Chedva wearing those boots meeting the menahelet the neighbors. The picture becomes clearer.

“They’re really not for us Chedva. Hashem will help us to find just the right boots — that fit both of us.” She pulls out that great line.

And it works.

They leave the store going from one store to the next. No boot compares. They end up at the beginning of the street once again across from the same store.

Leyah davens for strength.

Then the idea comes to her.

“Can you take the chain off?” she asks the store owner.

“No problem” he says in half Hebrew half Persian.

The boots are now perfect Leyah and Chedva both agree.

One day I was walking home beside a very special woman. It was getting cold and we started to talk about footwear.

She told me that once she was a doctor’s secretary in Jerusalem’s Bikur Cholim Hospital in 1967. She described how the floors and the walls were stone and the hospital was freezing. How you couldn’t warm up no matter what. How hundreds of children were in the hospital in rows of metal beds in the cold with rheumatic fever.

At the time her dear father a Holocaust survivor was living in Europe. She phoned him and said “Pappa I can’t bear to see the children without slippers.” Her father sent her money and she went to the almost only shoe store and ordered a few hundred pairs of slippers.

She reminisced about the times a broken man would knock on their door in Belgium. How her father would take the man upstairs to his closet open the doors and say “Take any suit you like.”

She then shared with me another story: Shortly after that job in Bikur Cholim she became a secretary for a private clinic.

One day a young boy came in with his sister to see the doctor. They went home and after about ten minutes he came back with another sister. Ten minutes later he came in with another sister. After a few more times she finally asked him “Why don’t you all come at the same time?” The boy answered “Because we only have one pair of boots. … ”

I wonder what was his mother’s great line that got them through.

Maybe it was: “Baruch Hashem we have one pair of boots.”