She searched for something that resembled the man she’d married, but all she recognized were the long, nimble fingers

Chava remembered rushing to the baby boutique when her older sister Rivka had given birth. The moment they’d received the good news, her mother, the newly minted Bubby, had asked if she wanted to go buy something for the baby. “A new baby comes home in a new outfit,” her mother had said.

She’d looked at her mother wonderingly. For Rivka’s wedding, Chava had worn an outdated brown gown from the local gemach, yet this tiny baby deserved something new when she didn’t even know the difference?

But she’d been too delighted to question her mother then.

She spent a fair amount of time in the boutique, fingering the soft cottons and admiring the delicate knits in shades of blue and mauve and white, caressing the bonnets and knowing that the crumpled bills in her pocket wouldn’t cover it all.

After all these years, she remembered every detail of that outfit she finally chose. The little embroidered bib with the flowers, the matching bonnet and blanket.

Her mother had vintched a hearty “Im yirtzeh Hashem by you,” as she scanned the receipt. Chava hadn’t even been engaged at that point, but she knew one thing: Her baby would have the most beautiful layette ever known to babyhood, and she’d buy it all with her own credit card.

Now, she looked at him, dressed in the hospital’s onesie and swaddled in a faded, pilled hospital blanket printed with geometric shapes. Little wisps of blonde hair peeked out of the striped hat — basically a stocking with a seam — and she wanted to shout and rail at the injustice of it all.

Instead, she asked the nurse, “Uh, do you think I can take this onesie home? I — I don’t have onesies and blankets for him yet.”

The nurse looked at her, eyes wide with pity. At the woman who had given birth alone and hadn’t had a single visitor.

“I’ll bring you a new one,” she said kindly.

Chava’s long-awaited baby was coming home with a brand-new, donated onesie — the sum total of his layette.