“Nice, isn’t it?” Shua had just come home from the mikveh, his peyos shining with moisture and his eyes with expectation

On Erev Shavuos she found it, wrapped in heart-spangled silver paper, on the tray.

Just before lighting the candles, she slipped her fingers under the folds of the wrapper, tearing a heart or two. She pulled it out: a small, machine-cut, wooden object, a keychain in the shape of a little bottle, painted red and black, lettered in white with the name “Nechami.”

A gift. For Yom Tov.

Bathed and fed, the baby was asleep in his infant seat. Bentzi was sitting on the couch, busy with his bag of potato chips. And for the first time in her life, she’d received a Yom Tov present.

“Nice, isn’t it?” Shua had just come home from the mikveh, his peyos shining with moisture and his eyes with expectation.

“Very nice,” she said. She couldn’t manage to say anything more. She pictured him, baffled, unsophisticated, chassidish and sheltered, peering at the revolving stand in the shop, searching for one name between “Naamah” and “Nitzah”… selecting this one, just for her.

And although she wanted so much more, she could appreciate the sparkle of this small gift.

She lit and made the brachah: Shehecheyanu. V’kiyemanu. V’higiyanu. La’zeman hazeh.

Now, the keychain jingles between her fingers. She’s been using it for ten years, stringing her keys on its ring. She pushes the black key into the door to the storeroom. She opens it, and the smell of fresh paint hits both her and her sister Chaya. The lavender wall they painted last week gleams before them.

Chaya appraises the wall. “You’re going to have photographers here soon, taking pictures for the interior-design magazines,” she says. “So should we start with the bird stencils today, or do you want to paint the other wall first?”

“The birds. They’re dying to get up there and fly. I have the stencils ready — did you bring the paint?”

“Got it right here.” Chaya rummages in a shopping bag and pulls out a little can of metallic silver paint. She applies masking tape to the wall and spreads sheets of transparent plastic on the floor.

This was going to be Nechami’s dream office: two storerooms converted into one, painted with a loving hand. Furnished one item at a time, built up slowly, but just the way she wanted it.