We were 15 when we met, and we would remain girlfriends for almost 70 years. I met Molly first. Her family were members of the Marine Park synagogue in Brooklyn, where my family belonged, so we recognized each other, from our involvement in Young Judaea, on the first day of our high school geometry class. We became even better acquainted when we doubled up sharing a desk in the overcrowded classroom. We didn’t learn a lot of geometry, spending class time instead getting to know each other and planning programs for Young Judaea, a Jewish youth group we both belonged to. Molly introduced me to Sydelle at a meeting of the local chapter, and the three of us soon became good friends.
Over the years, our lives have led us down separate paths, living in different cities, experiencing divorce, illness, and widowhood, but we are still friends seven decades later.
Molly had recently moved with her family from Passaic, New Jersey. Tall, thin, with brown hair and brown eyes, she had a friendly bubbly manner, a pleasant smile and demeanor, and was eager to make new friends, as was I. Like me, she entered high school without an elementary school peer group. My family moved to Flatbush when I was in the 8th grade, and I hardly had time to make friends before I graduated. Madison High School, located on Bedford and Quentin Avenues, about a mile from my home on Quentin and 38th Street, was a large public school of about 3,000 students located in an upwardly mobile, largely Jewish area of Flatbush. I had done no socializing with boys before high school and I felt awkward, sheltered and socially backward compared to many of my more visible, “out there” classmates. The social setting intimidated me; I found the students sophisticated, fashion conscious, and materialistic, while I was chubby, naïve, and sheltered. My mother encouraged me to go slow in taking on the behaviors of my classmates, and I remember the arguments we had about the appropriateness of wearing lipstick. I was into my junior year of high school, or close to 16, when she finally acceded. I guess by then she realized I was wearing it behind her back.
Molly and I connected almost immediately; our similar backgrounds made the connection easy. I liked her down-to-earth, easy-going manner, high spirits and unpretentiousness. Since we lived just a few blocks from each other, we often walked home from school together. Before separating, we made our mandatory stop at the candy store on the corner of Nostrand Avenue for egg cream sodas and a pretzel. Then we would grab a seat in the candy store booth, gossip about others, share news, and make plans for the days ahead. By our junior year we were both leading synagogue youth groups, so one year we arranged to have our two groups collaborate on the production of An American in Israel, where I rewrote the words of familiar songs to tell the story of my experiences in the Young Judaea summer Israel course of 1955. It was performed to great acclaim at a Mother-Daughter tea in celebration of Mother’s Day. For years afterwards, Molly reminded me that though I wrote and staged this musical production, I was totally inept at slicing lemons for the tea, and she had to come to my rescue. Many years later she told me that when she began leading a group, Rabbi B. had said to her that he hoped she would be as good as me. I was embarrassed to learn about his thoughtless comment, especially since Molly repeated it to me late into adulthood.
Sydelle lived a little further away and we didn’t meet until our sophomore year. She entered Madison in the 10th grade, coming from a neighboring junior high school. About my height, thin, dark complexioned with dark, very curly hair, she was intense and had a nervous tic. Sydelle, who lost her father when she was 13, worked for a dry cleaner after school and on Saturdays. The store was just three blocks from my house, so sometimes I would meet her during her break. That was when I was introduced to smoking, which I continued to do on and off until I was in my 50s. On many Saturdays, Molly and I would meet her in the late afternoon, when the store closed. By then, we were heavily involved in Young Judaea, and often had Saturday evening events. On the occasional free Saturday evening, however, we would head to Kings Highway, the neighborhood’s main commercial center, to window shop, stroll and join our Madison classmates at Junior’s Restaurant, famous for its cheesecake and ice cream sundaes.
Although we viewed ourselves as a threesome, the relationship between us was different and the balance shifted over time. During our high school and college years, I felt closer to Molly, but after marrying and moving away, Sydelle and Molly became a close twosome, and I more of a third wheel.
After high school, we continued our education and friendship at Brooklyn College, a 15-minute bus ride from our homes. Although we didn’t share classes, we managed to connect on campus for lunch or just by chance as we dashed to our next class. For a year or so Sydelle and I met each day to exchange bus transfers. We took different bus lines to school, which transferred to each other, so we could save carfare home by exchanging the transfers we got on our way to school. It didn’t amount to a lot of money, but we felt so clever outsmarting the transportation system.
By the time Molly entered Brooklyn College, she was going “steady” with Stan, our age but a year ahead of us in school. Majoring in the sciences, most of his classes were on another campus, and our paths rarely crossed. Molly had met Stan in Young Judaea, and the four of us often hung out together.
Although our friendships began in Brooklyn, Molly and I now live in the Washington, D.C. area, while Sydelle lives in Brooklyn Heights, with a beautiful view of the Manhattan skyline. I left Brooklyn right after my wedding, in the summer of 1957, when all three of us married; Molly and Sydelle in June, and I in August. Molly was the matron of honor at my wedding.
I finished college in 1957 before I married, while Sydelle and Molly were in the class of ’58 and had another year to complete. Anticipating that I would marry Julie when he was discharged from the army, I went to summer school to accelerate my studies and thus I graduated early, a year ahead of my friends. Julie and I had been dating since I was 16 and we had an understanding when he went into the army during the Korean War years.
After our honeymoon, Julie and I returned in late August for a brief visit to Brooklyn. We had already moved our belongings to our small furnished apartment in Providence, where I was to start graduate school at Brown and Julie a position with the City Planning Office. All three of us were starting new lives as young marrieds, and I was excited about our reunion.
We met in Molly’s new apartment, in the Beach Haven area of Brooklyn, having arranged a girls’ evening without our spouses. The apartment was airy and bright, not far from our old neighborhood and just a few blocks from where Molly’s parents lived.
It was a pleasant one-bedroom, with light streaming in from the large front window. As I entered, I recognized some pictures and knickknacks from Molly’s old bedroom, and it felt familiar and home-like. Molly and Sydelle, sitting on the new navy blue and white patterned sofa, seemed engaged in serious talk, which they stopped as I entered. The air felt heavy; not at all what I expected at the reunion of three newly married friends.
Molly looked up at me, and with a grey face and barely a greeting, blurted out, “I am pregnant and we can’t have a baby now.” I stepped back, floored by the implications, unable to respond. I joined her and Sydelle on the sofa, and we both held her as she rocked back and forth, saying repeatedly, “We can’t have a baby now.” I identified with her sentiments, and could offer just meager comfort, “I am sure it will all work out,” though I wondered how. Stan was starting his Ph.D. program at the Polytechnic Institute in downtown Brooklyn and Molly still had a year of college to complete. The rest of the evening passed in a blur, different from the reunion of three newly married friends I had expected.
Julie and I left two days later for Providence. The closer we got to Providence and our new lives, the further Molly’s situation receded from my mind. I soon became engaged in my new life as a graduate student, and as a newlywed in a new city. We didn’t speak often, as long-distance calls were expensive.
I did not know what to expect when we came home for the Christmas break. By that time, the reality for Molly and Stan had sunk in and they began to develop contingency plans, mainly to move back to her parents’ home when the baby came. Molly seemed down; the effervescent Molly had disappeared. Stan, enrolled in a demanding program, was beside himself, not knowing how he could help Molly. I learned later that Sydelle stopped by Molly’s apartment every day to get her out of bed and ready for school. She and her husband Bernie also visited several evenings a week to keep them company and cheer them up. What we didn’t know then was that this was the beginning of a lifelong pattern of depressive episodes, involving numerous hospitalizations.
While the friendship between Molly and Sydelle grew stronger and closer, my relationship with them grew more attenuated. We had moved to Providence and then to Boston a year later, where Julie entered MIT. When we finished our graduate studies, we headed off to Israel for 18 months, followed by several months traveling in Europe. By the time we returned to the States, Sydelle had her first child and Molly and Stan had moved with Adina, by then almost 5 years old, to the Washington area, where Stan, a newly minted Ph.D., took a position with the National Bureau of Standards.
Julie and I reconnected with Molly and Stan when we moved to D.C. in 1962, five years after we married, but it was hard making up for lost time and the different roads our lives had taken. Molly and Stan had settled in Hyattsville, in a family-oriented religious community, because they had become Sabbath observers and their Jewish practice was central in their lives. We moved to D.C., and not having children, were not involved in the Jewish community. Furthermore, Stan and Julie, our respective husbands, were not especially fond of each other, and although Molly and I stayed in touch, talking on the phone from time to time, we saw each other infrequently.
My relationship with Sydelle was also attenuated, largely a result of the geographic distance. Our infrequent visits to New York to visit family were busy, though over the years we managed to visit Sydelle and Bernard in their two-family house in Queens and later in their large Victorian house in the Ditmas Avenue section of Brooklyn. My in-person contacts with both Molly and Sydelle were limited during the years when we were all raising children, but we never lost touch completely. When I spoke with either one of them, I always got news of the other. We viewed ourselves as a threesome, and we sought to keep that relationship alive, in whatever form seemed feasible for the stage that we were in.
Molly was hospitalized for treatment a few times when her children were little. Visiting her the first time she was hospitalized unnerved me. Barely aware of my presence, she kept pulling at threads on her sweater, mumbling incoherently. Although she could barely manage a conversation, she clung to me when I got up to leave, begging me to stay longer. She was thin and forlorn looking and it broke my heart to see my vivacious friend so sad. Her forlorn appearance and desperation stayed with me for many days thereafter.
After that first visit and as the hospitalizations increased, I grew accustomed to the various stages of her depression, knowing that she would recover over time with the full course of treatment. It was the only thing that worked. The depressive episodes sometimes came close together, but there were also long stretches of time when she was fine and resumed her normal functions at work and home. Her longest period of remission was over 20 years, and when she was well, she shut the door on her illness and refused to talk about it, as though it had happened to another person. She said, “I don’t want to think about it when I am well.”
Sydelle came to visit Molly once or twice a year, staying with me when Molly was in the hospital, which enabled us to renew our friendship as well as support Molly. During one such visit I began to believe that she was having a drinking problem, a suspicion that Molly had shared with me and which alerted me to the number of times she excused herself to go to her room or the bathroom.
During one of my visits to New York, I shared with Sydelle how well my friend Carolyn, a recovering alcoholic, was doing. She changed the subject deftly, and her avoidance of the topic reinforced my belief that she did have a drinking problem. A few years later, her three daughters arranged a “tough love” confrontation, giving her the ultimatum that she sign herself into a treatment center or put their relationship at risk. That broke through her defenses; Sydelle followed through and has been sober ever since, perhaps more than 30 years.
In the summer of ’75 I learned that Sydelle and Bernard were separating. I felt sad for her and her daughters, especially since they would have to move out of their beautiful Victorian house in Brooklyn. Little did I know that within a year I too would be facing a divorce. Her children were just a few years older than mine, and although it was not an amicable divorce for either of us, I could remain in my house and count on reliable financial support that saw my sons through college. In contrast, Sydelle was forced to take Bernard to court for erratic and infrequent child support payments, which stopped altogether when he remarried. Years later, when Bernard fell ill, her daughters arranged among themselves to care for him.
We stayed in contact through all the ups and downs of our lives as we raised children and pursued careers. Molly returned to complete her BA at Brooklyn College, and when they moved to Maryland, got a Master’s in English at the University of Maryland. Sydelle got a Ph.D. in Anthropology and for several years taught at Brooklyn College.
For many of these years, Molly saw Sydelle more frequently than I did, as numerous family events brought her and Stan to Brooklyn, where they stayed as guests in Sydelle’s apartment. Although I got to New York frequently, because my son lives there, I only managed to occasionally squeeze in a lunch with Sydelle. On the other hand, living close to Molly, who had moved to Silver Spring, our relationship grew stronger, particularly after I divorced and became a frequent guest for Shabbat and holiday dinners at their home. At that point, Molly became the point person in our three-way relationship, often filling me in on news about Sydelle, with whom she was in more frequent contact than I.
In 1996, we celebrated our 60th birthdays with a trip to Savannah, Georgia and Charleston, South Carolina. It was the first time we traveled together as a threesome, and rather quickly we reverted to our teenage relationship, and had a great time sightseeing, schmoozing and dining out. We talked about doing it again, although we never did.
In the meantime, Esther, one of Molly’s daughters, settled permanently in Israel, and when Stan retired, Molly and Stan bought an apartment in Jerusalem and spent two to three months there each year. Molly invited Sydelle, who had not been to Israel since her teenage Young Judaea trip, to visit, sightsee with them and stay in their apartment. Molly and Stan were gracious hosts and delighted in showing off the country to Sydelle.
Molly and Stan were in Israel when Stan had a heart attack, slightly before his 80th birthday. Although he received excellent care at Hadassah Hospital, he never completely recovered and died two weeks after the attack. Needless to say, Molly was devastated and began a marked downward spiral. Esther took care of shipping Stan’s body home, while Judy and Adina, Molly’s other daughters, who lived stateside, made arrangements for the funeral and burial.
Molly was severely depressed at the funeral, and it was an effort to get her out of bed during the days of shivah at her home. Her daughters were very attentive, but it became clear that she would need to be hospitalized and treated again. It was heartbreaking to see her so immobilized and depressed.
After her treatment, Molly spent several weeks in a nursing home and then went into an apartment in an independent living community in Rockville. Her daughters helped furnish her apartment, bringing much of her furniture and, most importantly, her books from the Silver Spring house she shared with Stan. I visited regularly, Sydelle came down from New York, and it appeared that she was starting a new life without Stan.
Unfortunately, the “recovery” didn’t last for more than a year. She was hospitalized twice more, diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and was no longer able to live independently. Her daughters moved her to a small apartment in an adjacent assisted living facility. All her meals were provided and she had a full-time aide. Worst of all, she was a shadow of herself; her world had grown very small and it was difficult to find things to talk about. Only recently has she been well enough to attend events in her community, after living there for more than 3 years.
In the meantime, Sydelle and I spent part of two winters together in Oaxaca, recommended by Amy and Mike, good friends of Sydelle’s who had been going there for years. We rented a house through Airbnb, explored Oaxaca shops, museums and restaurants, traveled with Amy to surrounding villages to see artisans at work, and hosted friends and family, mainly mine, who came to visit. Our friendship grew stronger and we discovered anew how much we had in common and how much we enjoyed each other’s company, with frequent non-stop conversations. Recently, as the pandemic waned, I spent a weekend with Sydelle visiting Storm King and Dia in Beacon, NY and exploring old Brooklyn neighborhoods which are being dramatically transformed. We have planned for Sydelle to come south to see the African American History Museum and attend a production of the Shakespeare Theatre in Staunton, Va. We also plan to visit Molly for a much-delayed reunion of three old friends.
Our three-way friendship of almost 70 years has been durable even as it has changed. I was close to Molly initially, but it lapsed for a number of years. Then it blossomed again, aided by our geographic proximity, my fondness for Stan and their generosity and hospitality to me after my divorce. More recently, as Molly’s condition declined, a sense of loyalty and memory of shared experiences has become the glue binding us. The distance, however, has made it hard for Sydelle, as phone calls and messages to Molly often go unanswered, and when they finally do connect, Molly has little to say.
At the same time, my bonds with Sydelle have grown stronger as we have spent time together, found mutual interests and discovered we shared a worldview.
Reflecting on our long friendship, it appears that regardless of the change in our lives, what remains unchanged is that we three are still friends.