Who’s going to say the brutal words to Ima? Nobody’s volunteering

"Who’s going to break the news to Ima?” Chaya S ilver asked Nechami.

It was a tough question. Who would come and stir a pinch of reality into Ima’s lovely dreams? Who would arrive with two-year-old Yossi in a stroller, go upstairs to Ima’s house to see the gold brooms she’d bought, and be the messenger who would trickle this other information in, ever so delicately?

This isn’t a job Nechami wants to take on.

But here she is, climbing the stairs, hand in hand with Yossi. They knock on the familiar brown door.

“Nechami! It’s so good you came! Look, look what I just bought!” Ima says.

She takes out a collection of gold brooms adorned with burgundy roses. Ima beams. “Incredible, isn’t it, how I found them, readymade like that? It’s like a sign from Hashem that this shidduch is about to work out, don’t you think? I was walking past the overstock store by the Central Bus Station, something just made me go in, and there they were — a dozen gold brooms just looking at me, waiting for a mezhinka dance. All we need is a chassan — and it looks very promising.”

“Twelve? Who for?” Nechami tries to count. Her two girls, Gedalya’s four. Add in Yoely’s girls and her Belgian sister-in-law Yitty’s two-year-old twins — and it doesn’t add up to12, any way you figure it.

“Dudi’s daughter,” Ima says tersely.

Nechami blushes, startled. How could she forget Avital? Of course she didn’t leave her out intentionally. It was just… when she added up all the granddaughters, somehow, Dudi’s little girl didn’t enter her thoughts.

“And one for the kallah herself.” Ima waves a broom. The roses, entwined with fake pearls, wave with it. “I feel like Hashem is making it up to me now, after the whole story with Dudi’s wedding.”

There was no need to elaborate.

“The offers we’re getting for Chaya are a whole different world.” Ima glows. “Tzippe Shpinder is exactly our type. No fancy high-powered job, just a playgroup morah, so pleasant, so unpretentious. I really feel it’s a match made in heaven. I don’t need a prestigious family. Just a chassan with good middos who sits and learns.”

Yossi examines the golden bristles with interest. His admiring grandmother hugs him. “That’s not for you, Yossele,” she says. “Only the girls will dance with brooms at Chaya’s wedding. But you’ll get a new suit, tzaddik.”

Who’s going to say the brutal words to Ima? Nobody’s volunteering.

Ima leans confidentially toward Nechami. “I want Chaya to come to you a lot now. She should see, she should absorb. She should get a sense of what a real talmid chacham’s home looks like.”

“Well, you know…” Nechami tries slipping a word in. “It can get hard sometimes, too.”

“Of course!” Ima is undeterred. “It’s not easy being the elite! But it’s so, so, worth it, Nechamush, no?”

With the tender nickname, tears spring to Nechami’s eyes.

“Yes, Ima,” she says. “I don’t need convincing… but sometimes it takes a few years, and some life experience, to understand things.” She stops there.