"Heshy will be doing who-knows-what in my basement, learning karate or bee-keeping, and Chaim will assure me that it’s perfect, it’s his way, and I should just be tolerant”

Two weeks earlier, Shaindy Brucker had shared a little bit too much information and now she was trying to walk it back.

The other women had married children and it was okay to be honest sometimes, right? It wasn’t all pictures of the eineklach and “I love babysitting, I wait for it all week,” and “every einekel is my favorite.”

It was the day after Heshy had called her to confirm that he and Gitty would be arriving just after Succos, managing to use words “temporary” and “short-term” and “just till we get our bearings,” in the first three sentences.

Realizing it was a done deal, she’d risen to the occasion and said, “Of course, that’s what parents are for,” and “Baruch Hashem, we have the space and time at this point in our lives,” but in her mind, she was remembering how much Chaim had admired their mechutan, Shaya Veisfish, and his easy confidence. The dirah was on him — however he took care of his other children, he would take care of Heshy and Gitty. A Yid has no business making calculations, let’s drink l’chayim, mazel tov.

And now, it turned out, Mr. No Calculations had kissed his children goodbye and wished them well in America, where the other side would pitch in a little bit. He had probably gone home and grinned at his wife and said, “See, Baila, didn’t we say the Ribbono shel Olam doesn’t need our eitzos?”

So the next morning, when she’d been walking with her neighbors, she’d vented a little bit. They got it. They also had mechutanim who’d over-promised. But what she regretted was being a bit too open about Chaim’s relationship with Heshy.

“My husband is all about learning,” she’d told the other women. “He sees every minute as an opportunity to learn more Torah, and the other kids all more or less live that way, but Heshy was always more jumpy, he didn’t sit much. Chaim isn’t a confrontational person, you know, so his way of dealing with it is almost to deny it — he doesn’t lose sleep over it, he just decided that Heshy is different from him and zehu, end of story. And now, here they come, and Heshy will be doing who-knows-what in my basement, learning karate or bee-keeping, and Chaim will assure me that it’s perfect, it’s his way, and I should just be tolerant.”