Rachel and Lenny: A Love Story

by Lenny Garfinkel

Rachel Ann Sykes was born on December 28, 1954 in Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, MD. This is the same hospital in which I was born nearly four months earlier. Rachel was the second of four children born to Melvin and Judy Sykes, both lawyers. She had one older brother, David, and two younger brothers, Daniel and Israel.

Rachel spoke of a basically happy childhood. She had many friends, a few of whom she kept up with until her death. She was an excellent student.

I met Rachel in Bnei Akiva, a Jewish youth organization, in 1970. We were both in 11th grade. We took to one another immediately and became very good friends. We found that we liked the same music, the same books, the same ideas. Our friendship was within the context of the larger group of friends until I asked her out on our first date in May, 1972. We used to speak endlessly every night on the phone. One night in May, I asked her to come with me to see "The Godfather". She agreed and I was in heaven. When I left her that night, she leaned over, kissed me on the cheek, and said "I like you." I was in love.

I suppose that by the standards of today’s youth, our courtship was tame. But it was fun and rich. The summer after high school, I worked days for pocket money. But we spent every evening together. Our friendship kept getting deeper and deeper. At one point that summer, Rachel said to me "I’d like to have your children". She was in love too, but was not as aware of it as I was.

In the fall, we parted ways. I stayed in Baltimore and attended Johns Hopkins University. Rachel went to Barnard. We wrote to each other. I went to New York to spend a few weekends with her. Rachel went out some in New York, but her heart must have been in Baltimore. She spent the summer after freshman year in Baltimore, and we spent even more time together.

Rachel went to Israel for her sophomore year. She arrived in Israel and worked as a volunteer for a couple of months on Kibbutz Sa’ad in the northwest Negev. The Yom Kippur War broke out while she was on the kibbutz. Studies began late that year, but eventually she moved to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Rachel made new friends and had many adventures. She returned to Baltimore in mid-summer after sophomore year and we renewed our relationship. We were closer during junior year than ever before and during the summer before senior year, I began talking about marriage. Rachel panicked and decided to break up in order for each of us to play the field for a while and make sure that we were doing the right thing. I was heartbroken. I knew that we were soulmates and was so sad about losing the girl I loved.

We spent nearly a year apart and out of touch. I kept track of her doings and she kept track of mine via her brothers, who were my backers. Rachel graduated Barnard Magna Cum Laude and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. In the meantime, I had accepted an offer to attend graduate school in molecular biology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. Things worked out in the end. They always did for us. We got back together in September, 1976. We were very cautious at first. But we knew each other intimately and quickly fell in love again. By mid-September, our talk of "if we get married" changed to "when we get married". I remember the day when this happened. It was Yom Kippur, October 4, 1976. We spent the day together at services at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. During a long break in the services, we went for a long walk along the river. By the end of the day, we knew that we would marry. I never proposed. We just knew. We were so in tune and have been ever since.

Even though we were informally engaged, we did not make the public announcement until Thanksgiving that year. Neither our friends nor our family were in the least surprised. I guess it was so obvious. Our parents and Rachel’s two grandmothers made a big fuss as if it were a big surprise. But, of course, they all knew exactly why our families had gathered.

Our engagement was fun. Wherever we went, we would announce to anyone interested that we were engaged to be married. We were so happy. We spent every weekend together at the apartment Rachel shared with two friends at 103rd and West End Ave. in Manhattan. I was living in the dormitory at Einstein and was glad to get away from there. During the week, we spoke at length every night by phone. We were reminded of these days recently during one of Rachel’s hospitalizations. We again spoke at length every night, after spending the day together, and reminisced about those days 20 years ago. It felt just as romantic now.

We got married on June 19, 1977. It was a beautiful wedding and we enjoyed it thoroughly. Jewish tradition prevents the bride and groom from seeing one another for the week before the wedding. At the wedding, the couple first see each other when the groom is led in before the ceremony to cover the bride’s face with the veil. This is one of the most beautiful pictures in our wedding album. We were such lovebirds, and you could tell that we had not seen each other for a week.

We went to Cape Cod for our honeymoon. We picked the place from a book called "Back Roads and Country Inns". The description of the Melrose Inn in Harwichport was lovely. But the mention of hooked rugs and rocking chairs should have tipped us off to the fact that we would be the youngest guests by at least 40 years. No matter. It was the first of many great vacations. In subsequent years we went to Martha’s Vineyard, camping in Acadia National Park and Baxter State Park in Maine, and camping in Vermont and New Hampshire. We brought our bicycles on these camping vacations and had beautiful, long rides in the New England countryside.

One funny story about Baxter State Park. I chose that place because it was so remote. I love getting really away. Well, Baxter is really away. The counties in that part of Maine are so remote that they don’t have names, just numbers. Most of the traffic is logging trucks. We left the paved road and drove the last 35 miles to Baxter State Park on a gravel road. When we to the gate of the park, we asked one of the park rangers where there was a phone so Rachel could call her parents to let them know where we were. The ranger pointed back in the direction from which we had come and said "About 35 miles down that road...".

We began to call each other Bubbie (Rachel) and Bubby (Lenny). Both come from bubaleh, a term of endearment in Yiddish. The different spellings were based on Adam’s Rib, a film with Hepburn/Tracy in which they play lawyers arguing opposite sides of the same case. They called each other Pinkie and Pinky.

Our first child, Benjamin Philip, was born December 17,1980. Benny was a screamer. One series of photos in our album which was typical shows Benny screaming, then Rachel nursing him, then the two of them asleep on the sofa, Rachel on her back and Benny lying on her chest. He was very exhausting. Then, at age 8 months or so, things quieted down and we were left with a delightful child.

During her first year after college, Rachel worked at an agency called FRIA, Friends and Relatives of the Institutionalized Aged. She loved this work and was motivated to go to the Hunter School of Social Work for her Masters in Social Work. Rachel studied community organization, specializing in the elderly. After completing the two year course in June, 1979, Rachel worked at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx with senior groups.

I finished my doctorate in June, 1982 and we set our sites west for a postdoctoral fellowship at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech), in Pasadena, CA. We needed a religious Jewish community and the closest one was in North Hollywood in the San Fernando Valley. We spent three wonderful years there. Wherever we were, whether in the Bronx, in L.A., or here in Israel afterward, Rachel’s cheerfulness and honesty endeared her to people. She made friends so easily.

Rachel worked at the Jewish Federation on Wilshire Boulevard in the fund raising section. She was involved in organizing fund raising activities of senior groups. She always got a kick out of accessing the computer and seeing how much the movie stars had pledged and comparing it with how much they actually donated. The gaps were amazing.

Our years in L.A. were very happy. During our second year there, our second son, Noam Akiva, was born on September 10, 1983. Just before Noam’s birth, we visited Israel in order to attend the wedding of Rachel’s youngest brother, Israel. We (well I, really) got this bug that Israel might be a fun place to live. We were brought up as observant Jews. And this was, after all, the Jewish homeland. I kept talking about it and Rachel, knowing that if left to my own devices I would do nothing said "Fine, you make the plans and I’ll come along." But this time, I started making plans and acting on them. She agreed to come for a two year trial. After two years we would have a family meeting to decide our future. I could live with that.

It was hard to leave L.A. But, we were excited about our adventure in a new country. We began our life here in an absorption center provided by the government. I began working at the Weizmann Institute as a researcher. After a few months, we moved into a rented apartment and hooked up with a large community of American and British ex-patriates living in Rehovot. Again, Rachel’s personality made us so many friends in so short a time. Our third son, Gadi Mordechai, was born on August 14, 1986. Even though we had only been in Rehovot for six months, his circumcision (brit) ceremony was attended by a huge crowd, a tribute to Rachel.

During our first six months in Israel, Rachel worked at a social work agency in Nes Ziona, a neighboring town. When Gadi was born, Rachel decided to quit her job and spend time with her new baby. With Benny and Noam, Rachel went back to work after two months. She worked only three days a week, but those three days were so hectic. Expressing milk for feedings, rushing to get home in time so that the baby would help relieve the pressure from her engorged breasts. Now, after her third child, Rachel wanted to relax. She took up typing at home. People would bring manuscripts in English and she would type it on the computer which I bought before moving here. In those days, household computers were not commonplace here, and Rachel had a great thing going. After a couple years of this, she decided that it would be more fun to translate works from Hebrew to English. She was great at this and worked as a translator until her first CT scan in August, 1995.

After three years in Israel had passed, I said to Rachel "How about that family meeting that was planned for after two years here?" It was clear that this was unnecessary. We were home.

Our fourth child, Hadas Ayala, was born on May 18, 1989. Rachel was so convinced that she was destined to be mother of boys only that when the midwife said "It’s a girl!" Rachel told her that there was no need to say that just to make us feel good. The midwife was surprised and said "I never joke about these things". Rachel was so happy to have a daughter. During her pregnancy, people would say to her "I bet you really want a girl" and Rachel was annoyed. She said "No, I want a healthy baby." And she meant it. But when we got our girl, we were overjoyed. Rachel would finally have someone to buy frilly socks and fancy dresses for. Someone who could wear her hair in braids.

Our lives in Israel were so happy. We so enjoyed raising our children here. Children have the sort of independence here which you don’t find in the U.S. We don’t worry about personal injury the way we did in the states. Life was good, and we appreciated it. We would go back to Baltimore every summer for a few weeks, courtesy of Rachel’s parents. So the kids got to know both sets of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins well. We had wonderful friends here. So many people just naturally loved Rachel. She always had a smile on her face. She was always willing to listen to anyone’s problems and offer sage advice. She was a good friend to so many people. She was my best friend.

Our last year and a half was a time of tremendous growth for us, both individually and as a couple. During the shiva, the seven days of mourning, I compared this period to Dickens’Tale of Two Cities: It was the best of times, it was the worst of time. It was such a difficult period for us, confronting our mortality. Rachel spent so many weeks, all told, hospitalized. I would drive an hour each way, every day, to be with her. She insisted that it was not necessary, but how could I be away from my Bubbie? Then I would rush home to care for the kids. The kids developed a great degree of independence during this period which helps us all now. During the first 30 days of mourning, Jewish males traditionally do not shave. My beard has much more white in it than I imagined. Every white hair was earned.

But as difficult as this period was, we became even closer. As much as we were in love during our nearly 20 years of marriage, our love became even deeper during these last months. As Rachel entered her spiritual odessey under the guidance of her brother David, I joined her. We were priveleged to learn perspective. We began to see what is really important and what can be ignored. It was almost as if our vision became clearer. During Rachel’s last month, our love was so deep, our caring for each other so complete, that it is hard to imagine that this growth could have continued. I believe that it would have. We were soulmates, my beautiful Bubbie and me. My soul yearns for hers. I know that in the future, our souls will be together again.