1958 Diana and Sy Meet

The Jewish Hospital of Brooklyn was a New York City teaching hospital, with more than 500 patient beds. The complex included the main building and four other, stand-alone but connected, buildings: the Nursing School and its dormitory, the Intern/Resident dormitory, the Clinic building and the Obstetrical building. 

Both the Intern/Resident training and School of Nursing programs were considered among the finest in the city and competition for admission was keen.

I entered the three year program as a freshman Nursing student in September, 1957, my scores on the entrance exam awarding me a three year, full scholarship.

  1957       1958

By the spring of 1958, I was at the top of my class, but found my commitment to Nursing failing fast.  I found the academic studies fascinating, but detested the quasi-military aspect of the profession.  I was fiercely independent and, after six months, I regretted my decision to enter this “nunnery”.  Every aspect of my life was controlled by the program’s demands…and the exhaustion of 9 hour workdays in addition to classroom workloads. I resented the lack of private time and the curfews imposed.  Every move made by the students was critically observed by upperclassmen, faculty or hospital staff.  Looking back, it was natural to rebel and to wrestle with the decision to remain in this stifling structure…I was only 17.  My brother, Dick, was pursuing a master’s degree in Seattle, and we corresponded about my dilemma.  He advised me to stay in the program, but stay open-minded to other avenues of interest.  I agreed that was the best course of action, and the next few months passed quickly. 

The July 4^th   holiday weekend was hot and sunny, and I was on duty. 

At Saturday’s lunch, I sat with my classmates, our backs to the cafeteria’s window wall.  I looked toward the door at the moment he walked into the room, his walk a swagger.  The white Resident’s uniform set off his dark hair, thick eyebrows, fair skin and those blue, oh so blue eyes.  I could not avert my eyes or swallow my food.  He sat down facing my table, but far to the front of the room.  In a few seconds, I felt a palpable connection, a chemical reaction mixing in the warm July air.  This was the moment that began our life together.    His gaze found mine.  “Who are you?” the silent question begged.  “You are wonderful,” my eyes said.   “You are beautiful”, the silent foreplay continued.  We were young.  Life was grand.  This magic was believable.  All of our lives stretched ahead, but this moment would always be remembered.

Time was passing, and I forced myself to return to the reality of my schedule, ending my need to look at his face.

I tossed the remainder of my lunch into the trash can and, my face flushed, returned to my assigned Nursing floor.

How our lives turned and were changed in an instant, on a chance event, not really a meeting. 

I had been a student for less than a year, but Sy had been at the hospital for two years by this time.  As an Ob-Gyn Resident, he had been working in the obstetrical building, and my training rotation had not yet included that area. 

Oddly, lost to my memory, there had been one other time that we were in the same place, a time we had almost met.

During the spring of 1958, the Nursing School sponsored a dance in the hospital’s auditorium, a ground floor space in the Resident’s dormitory. While I was dancing with a frat boy from NYU, an upper-class nursing student interrupted.  Pointing to two men at the edge of the dance floor, she said, “That’s Sy Wiener, and he wants to introduce his brother to you”.  I laughed, and responded, “What’s wrong with him?  His brother is too tall!”  I laughed again, and continued dancing. The Wiener brothers faded into the crowded auditorium and from my memory.

My July rotation was on the second floor of the hospital’s East wing, female medicine.  That night, as I prepared the 10PM Meds, I found we had run out of an antibiotic.  The pharmacy was closed, and after calling the other nursing floors the nurse on 5 East, Gynecology, told me to come up, she had the medicine I needed.

At that hour the hospital is a quiet place, and, with ward lights turned off, a dark one.  Ceiling fixtures in the hallway created pools of light through which I walked to reach the elevator, my footfalls clicking on the linoleum floor.  

When the doors opened, there he was.  Just standing there, leaning on the back wall, so handsome in his white uniform.  My knees felt weak.  I stepped into the elevator car and turned to face the door.  He stepped behind me, leaning close to my ear.  He whispered, “Hello, Miss Rubinstein, where are you going?”   The car reached the fifth floor before I could manage “hello”.  I stepped out into the darkened hallway.   5 West was the X-Ray department.  No work at this hour.  5East was Gynecology, which was just where he was headed, too.  We walked silently together and separated at the desk of the floor’s charge nurse.  He turned to enter the darkened ward, and I spoke to her about the medication I needed.

I returned to the elevator.  All at once, he was there, taking my elbow and steering me toward the X-Ray department.  In that hallway, he leaned so close to me and asked very quietly if he could call me.  I said “yes”.  I lived in Nurses Residence.  He knew where to find me.  Then, he asked, “How old are you?  It’s important, because I’m an old man”.  I laughed and said, “I’m old enough to take care of myself”.

He walked me back to the elevator, and I returned to my patients on 2 East. 

I was seventeen years and seven months.  In two months, he would be thirty.  We were both in strange waters.

 Bologna, 1956

He had spent five years in Bologna, Italy attending Medical School.  Before that, four years of undergraduate and one more in a Masters program while he tried to get into medical school.  There had been many, many women.  Some were even married or divorced.  Remember, this was the 1950’s, at least a decade before people talked openly of such things!

I had graduated from Lincoln High School in the summer of 1957, five months before my seventeenth birthday.  How much experience with “men” did I have?

There were some boyfriends, but only one “love”, which at the time was extremely serious and grown up, and lasted two years.  During his Christmas break from College in December of 1957, I cut off the relationship with Allan. 

Living away from home, I needed to be free.   It was over.  To kiss him hello after three months of separation made me feel like a hypocrite. He spoke of engagement.  I said goodbye.

I dated college boys, med students and a few interns, but I thought them egocentric, childish.  I found the dating game boring, misogynist, and programmed.  I didn’t enjoy the bar scene with its endless small talk and posturing.

But this was different.  I was not in control here.  I was afraid of Sy.  He was older, worldly.  Experienced with women. 

Our first date was on Tuesday, following our meeting in the x-ray department.  Wanting to appear aloof, Saturday night was not an option.   Saturday night was for serious dates, and I needed to define this as a casual encounter, only a Tuesday.   It was a small gambit, but one that helped me to feel I had some control over these events, that I was mature enough to date this man.

Sexual mores were very rigid, and I was a “good” 1950’s teenager, always protecting my “reputation”.  Abruptly, I had moved into a new arena, where those conventions and restrictions had become absurd. 

Mrs. Rose, the dormitory housemother, called me to say that my date had arrived.  I met him in the foyer of Residence Hall.  I wore a pale green summer suit, with slim skirt, fitted jacket and high heels.  He wore a light blue sport jacket and navy trousers.

To my relief, and in spite of the sexual tension, conversation was easy. 

We went to “The Airport”, a nightclub near Floyd Bennet field.  This area of Brooklyn, Mill Basin, was full of houses in construction.  Of course, we didn’t know it at the time, but in only two years we would be raising a family in that very neighborhood. 

There were few other patrons in the club on that weekday night.  We sat at a small booth and ordered drinks.  He told me his life story.  All about living in Italy for six years, his family, and his aspirations. 

 The band played standard ballads and we danced, alone on the floor.  He was an experienced dancer, his hand at the small of my back, guiding me.  I surrendered to his lead, and we moved together as one, our bodies a perfect fit. It was as if we had danced together all our lives.   My lips pressed against his cheek, my breath warming it.   There was no stopping the kiss there on the dance floor…it was the natural result of our mutual heat.  We were lost in the passion and promise of this beautiful moment.

It was time to leave.  I had an 11:30 PM curfew.  We both knew that something spectacular, new and frightening had happened.  There was very little conversation on the drive back to the hospital.

We kissed goodnight, and I rushed inside Nurses Residence with the taste of him still strong on my mouth, the feel of his embrace still urgently pressing against me.  I was on a runaway train, hurtling into the unknown.   Exhilarated and frightened, on my emotional edge. 

 I felt so alive.  All other people were vague and superfluous. All but Sy.  My senses were exaggerated.  Touch, feel, smell, taste, awareness…. all heightened.  To be at the very start of my life as an adult was so overwhelming.  I can still see the sky filled with stars, and smell the sweet air of that summer’s night.  That moment when childhood was forever left behind, the sensation of being uplifted, soaring on wings of independence and purpose, the moment when all things are possible, but only one is paramount. 

I was a woman now,  propelled by instinct, the very reason for human existence, to love him, to have his children. 

 1958     1958

Posted November 23rd, 2007