Apropos of my most recent post, indicating that I had roots in Saint Louis, I thought I would tell of the discovery of a grandmother I didn't know I had.

A few years after we moved here, my wife and I were sitting at Temple eating some food after Selichot (just about all of our observances involve food), when a woman came up and sat down at our table.

We introduced ourselves, and she said "Oh, I was married to a Cytron once".

Now in Saint Louis, my name isn't so uncommon, though I'm not related to the Cytrons that used to live here, notably the pharmacist. But because of him and his pharmacy, people here know how to pronounce my name, and that's kind of nice for a change.

So I thought, well, she was married to the drug store Cytron, couldn't have been related to me. She goes on to say that he had a daughter named Janice and a son named Frank, and then I realized she was speaking of my aunt and father. So I ran over and hugged her and said "hello grandma".

My wife was astonished and was muttering about how these things don't happen. So I called my parents the next day and said, "Why didn't you ever tell me about Shirley" (and that's allI said). Without missing a beat, my mom told me that they were only married for 6 months before my grandfather died. Well maybe so, but that was about 50 years ago and my mom knew exactly what I was talking about. Did she think I would never run into this woman?

Posted by: Ed at June 16, 2003 10:39 PM