Why was a charity case jetting off on vacation?
My niece Basya doesn’t have it easy. Full-time job, full-time mother, full-time housewife, and a husband who hasn’t held down a solid job in maybe six years.
Oh, I don’t think it’s for lack of trying. Tully’s a nice guy, if a little socially lacking. When they were newly married, and he learned in kollel, they seemed very happy. She had a nice job, they lived in a little dollhouse-sized apartment, and even with one baby, two, it worked.
But now they have a growing family, kein ayin hara. Tully left kollel when their third child was born, and for a while he worked in a store, but that closed down and left him without a job and without very much professional experience. So they got by — Basya took on more hours, they managed to stretch a little longer in their tiny apartment — but eventually, it wasn’t working anymore.
Tully tried his hand at a couple of business ventures here and there — short-term things, esrogim for Succos, matzos for Pesach. Some seemed to do okay, others failed dismally, leaving them with piles of debt on top of everything else. My sister, Basya’s mother, confided in me one day that she didn’t know what the couple would do.
Create a free account to keep reading.
