by Sara Gottlieb

The children were finally asleep; it had been a long day. When the phone began to ring, I jumped with a start. Who could be calling at such a late hour?

It was my friend Chaya. “How’s everything?” I asked, my voice masking my dismay at the lateness of the call.

“I finally got all my children in for the night,” she reported. “It’s the first chance I’ve had to pick up the phone in days.”

We caught up on all the latest news. Her son had the flu. My daughter had an ear infection. Homework . . . science experiments . . . class trips . . . parent-teacher conferences . . .

It took Chaya some time to get to the point of her call. “Sara, do you ever get overwhelmed by the demands others place upon you?”

Not quite sure what she was driving at, I waited, giving her a chance to continue.

“Take today, for example. Yitzy was home with the flu. He had no appetite and a low-grade fever. He has a sensitive stomach. The doctor told me to give him enough fluids so that he didn’t become dehydrated. Every half-hour I was in his room, coaxing him to take a few sips of water or chicken soup.

“A neighbor called, asking me to do her carpool. There was no way I could help her out. Yitzy was in no condition to be left at home alone, even for half an hour. I tried to explain, but she didn’t give me a chance. She hung up on me, after reminding me about the carpool she had done for me when my car broke down last winter. ‘Favors are to be reciprocated,’ she advised me in no uncertain terms.”

Chaya continued. “Yesterday I had a doctor’s appointment first thing in the morning. By the time I got home, I was physically and emotionally drained from all the tests and lab work. I decided to take a brief nap before starting dinner.

“Then the phone rang. It was a friend I hadn’t heard from in ages. She was going out of town for a couple of days and wondered if her daughter Shayna could stay at my house. My friend assured me that Shayna would be no trouble at all.

“I turned down her request, explaining that my husband and I would be away at precisely that time and a babysitter was staying over with our children. But my friend didn’t know how to take no for an answer. She told me that my babysitter could watch her Shayna as well! She figured, what’s one more kid when you’re already watching four?

“I politely refused. I never go away with my husband. This time, however, he insisted that I join him, and I decided not to turn him down. I was nervous enough about leaving the children overnight. I certainly would not feel comfortable leaving an extra child with the babysitter. But my friend made me feel so guilty that I wanted to cry. I almost picked up the phone to call her back and say that I’d do it.”

Chaya paused for a moment to catch her breath. “Now, really, Sara, do these things ever happen to you, or am I the only one everyone calls to ask for a favor?”

“This happens to me all the time,” I assured her. “When my children were younger, it was mostly babysitting that my friends wanted. Now it’s my secretarial services they’re looking for. Since I’m at the computer all the time anyway, they’ve decided that it’s not a big deal for me to type a few extra pages.”

I sighed, vividly recalling those phone calls I received so often back then. . . .

“Hi, Sara, did I catch you at a bad time?”

“No, not at all.”

“That’s good. Are you doing anything special today?”

“Nothing special at all.” I decided not to trouble my friend with the details of my broken car.

Actually, I rather hoped she had some interesting way for us to spend some time together.

“Well, that’s good, because there’s a big sale going on at Meyer’s. I’d love to go, but it’s impossible to shop with the children under my feet. Since you’re not doing anything anyway, perhaps I could drop them off at your house for a couple of hours.”

It was my own fault. I should have acted busy. (Not that taking care of my own pre-schoolers wasn’t a full-time job in itself.) But it was too late to take back my words. “Sure,” I said, not meaning it at all.

A “couple of hours” transmuted into an entire afternoon. While my little ones napped, her children turned the house upside down. When my older kids returned from school, there was no dinner ready for them. “Just take cereal and milk,” I told them. But we were out of milk, and I couldn’t get to the grocery store. When my husband returned from work, I explained the situation to him, and he could not understand how I was constantly getting into these predicaments.

“You must learn to be more assertive,” he suggested on many occasions.

“Easier said than done,” I thought, resolving to be more assertive the next time someone called. But they all had a way of catching me off guard.

I told all this to Chaya, and she sounded comforted. “Sara, I feel better already. At least now I understand that it’s not just me. It’s all of us. As long as we’re willing to do, people will keep calling. Of course, there are always unexpected problems or emergencies. But we’re human beings; we can’t do everything for everyone at every time.”

Chaya and I resolved to be more assertive the next time we got a call for help. We would learn how to say no and feel good about it! We agreed to touch base at the end of the week and compare notes. I had my first opportunity to be assertive the very next day. As soon as the children were off to school, the phone rang. Who could it be this early in the morning?

“Hi, it’s Barbara.” From her tone, I could here a request coming. How would last night’s resolution affect me?

“I’m going for a job interview this afternoon. Could you do a quick resume for me this morning? I know you’re an excellent typist, so it shouldn’t take you long at all.”

“Of course,” I replied. How could I refuse a friend in need? Perhaps for Barbara this constituted an “emergency.” I promptly called the dentist to reschedule my appointment of that morning and waited for Barbara to arrive.

I realized then and there that I would never change. I wondered for a moment how Chaya was doing, but decided not to call. We had agreed to speak at the end of the week, so I would just have to wait.

It was probably the longest week of my life. Every day seemed to drag on. Not that I wasn’t busy. I actually had to keep a chart of all the chessed I was doing so as not to forget anything important. There was the dry-cleaning I picked up for Shira, and the cake I baked for Sheila’s kiddush, and the grocery shopping I did for Chaim and Rachel, and . . .

When the phone rang on Friday morning, I knew it was Chaya.

“Hi, Sara, I have a favor to ask of you,” she said with a laugh.

“Oh, no,” I thought. What could she want? After all, she was the one who had started me on this assertiveness thing in the first place.

“Please don’t ever tell me to be assertive again. Since our conversation, I’ve never done so much chessed in my life. Actually, I’m busy right now babysitting for the Schneider twins. I can’t talk long, because it sounds too quiet and I must make sure they’re not into any trouble yet. Mrs. Schneider is out of town for a couple of days for her sister-in-law’s cousin’s bar mitzvah. She just had to go; she’s so close with the boy’s family.”

“Are you kidding? You know I haven’t been out of town in years.”

My doorbell rang, so we hung up, promising to keep in touch. At my door stood Mrs. Avrahami, my elderly across-the-street neighbor. “Can your husband mow my lawn when he does yours?” she asked matter-of-factly.

“I’m sure he’d be happy to,” I replied, without giving it much thought. “But please speak to him yourself. He should be home at three.”

It was only after she left that I realized what I had said. My husband hadn’t mowed our lawn in years. We always hire Yankel from down the block to do it for us. He can use the extra money, and it saves us time and energy that we don’t have in the first place.

Later that day I called Mrs. Avrahami and suggested that she, too, get in touch with Yankel. I worried that she would be upset, but instead she thanked me profusely for the suggestion and said that she would call him at once.

What a feeling of satisfaction it was to realize that not only had my idea helped a neighbor in need, it had helped two neighbors simultaneously. And it didn’t take more than a moment of my time or energy! I whispered a prayer of thanks to Hashem that I was able to be on the giving end once again. Then I picked up the phone and dialed Chaya’s number. No sense waiting another week to touch base. This discovery was too important to keep to myself.

Sara Gottlieb lives in Oak Park, MI. She would contribute articles more frequently, but can’t seem to find the computer time to write them.