The Threesome

The first two years following my sister’s marriage were very traumatic for me. Memories of those times stir up feelings of anger and resentment. I'm sure if I’d see a therapist today, all my current troubles would probably be traced back to those times.

I remember especially the Sundays, I’d come home from school exhausted. As was customary, I poured myself a glass of milk and headed for the freezer for some heimish, frozen Kokosh cake. That, while reading the Balachtoongen, really did it for me.

Just four weeks after her Chassana and the trouble started. The Kokosh cake was gone. It wasn’t like my mother wasn’t baking them. Oh, sure she did. She’d spend hours kneading the dough and mixing the sugars till the entire kitchen just needed to be rolled up and baked. But my sister had just been tied to a lover forever, and she was destined to celebrate it with every piece of mezonas around.

She’d be talking on the phone to him in kollel, giggling into the receiver like an idiot, while devouring mountains of food. She had no conscious and no problem with keeping the zipper open.

She'd sit on my mother’s bed, crunching something onion-and-garlic, while shushing about things I wasn’t privy to listen to. From under the door I’d get lots of pronouns like ‘him’ and ‘his’. Most conversations ended with thankful words addressed to my mother. Hug, hug. “chachmes nashim, my dear…”

See, to her marriage was about being a threesome.

Sister would bring bags of laundry that she needed to wash ‘here’ because she’s eating dinner 'here' anyway. She'd be found cleaning in my favorite robe or only pair of slippers. It didn’t matter that she’d said good bye to me with a heart of sincerity. She was back in my life, this time owning my mother.

The kokosh cake was now being shipped off to her home, and the rest my sister burnt with a blink. My mother would do turnovers and lasagna but we got chicken. When Purim came around, our home was full of enough ribbon to wrap the globe, because my sister had a shvigger.

But my sister had no home.

Many of my friends have gone on to live such lives. The mother is there to cut the cord as the baby makes its grand entrance, the mother dictates what should or should not be done in the bedroom, and the mother listens to the daughter's cries and encourages her over and over again to practice savlanos.

To those, the men really belong in Kollel, where they should enjoy the big breakfast that the mother-in-law cooked up. The woman should be working hard to earn a living, only to fall into the mothers house where veibele would sit around and whine about how much she wants to quit work. The mother, the loving mother, is always there to make her feel better and get her through the tough times.


This bothers me, not only because the other children also need cake, but because a mother has no partnership in a young woman’s relationship. A husband and wife should learn to ride the waves themselves, and master the art of holding on. To each other.