I RETURN THE CALL - part 3

Of course I cannot wait until I can call this young woman back...Michelle Romano...whoever! As soon as it is 9 AM, I call and tell this person named Michelle that I am indeed Dolores Friedman who was born in Panama in 1939 and raised in Atlantic City. And you are?

Michelle tells me the following and as she spoke, I could barely control the sobs between my responses.

"As I said on the message, my Dad and I had been doing some genealogy research and found that he has a cousin we never knew about...and we are sure that cousin is you.

My Dad's name is David Isom, and his mother was Laverne Isom, who was one of your mother's sisters." "My Mother?? My real Mother? But her name was Ondra!". "No Dolores, her name was not Ondra. It was Ruth. Ruth Lake, and she was born in Montana". "Ruth Lake? Montana? Not Panama?"? "Yes Dolores, Ruth Lake, and Montana is where she and her family lived." Montana? Big Sky Country?John Wayne, cowboys? Impossible. There are no Jews in Montana and I am Jewish and this is crazy. Or so I thought!


Michelle said my mother was one of 5 siblings; she had a set of twin sisters, Lillian and Laverne, (Laverne, was Michelle's grandmom,) another sister Thelma, and a brother named Buddy. All of them were orphaned at a very young age. I had aunts and an uncle named Buddy. I was in shock, real shock! My mother had a name...it was not the name on her death certificate and not the name on my birth certificate but it was her REAL name. Ruth! From the bible I thought. Michelle continued.
She said the Lakes on my Grandfather's side came from England and my Grandmother Lake came from Scotland. England? Scotland? I had to ask her, " Michelle what religion are you?" She answered, "Mormon". I couldn't help it but I started to laugh out loud. Good God, I thought, I've got polygamists in my family!

I said to Michelle, you mean the kind of Mormons that wear those long dresses and braid their hair and are called sister wives with one husband? After all I had been hooked on that HBO TV series, about a Mormon family called, "Big Love" and furthermore we had just been inundated with TV news about the Texas compound of polygamists that had been raided.

She explained they were not polygamists, but simply Latter Day Saints, and that everyone in the Lake family were not Mormons, it was just that her Dad's Mother, Laverne, had married a Mormon at a very young age and so she converted from being a Presbyterian to her husband's religion and so her son David, my first cousin who actually did the research on me, was raised Mormon as well.

I asked if there were any other cousins and she said yes, several second cousins that were still alive and they lived all over the country and they were a mix of Baptists, Catholics and Presbyterians. I thought to myself, Grandmom Dora, who was not allowed to know about my Mother, the shiksha rumba dancer from Panama, must be spinning in her grave because now she really had her come-upins! My whole mishpulka were goyem!


And then, out of nowhere...Michelle dropped the mother load...."Did you know you have a sister who's name is Elaine? Would you like to talk to her? We have her number and she knows we were going to call you. She is waiting to hear from you."

That did it! I told Michelle to hold on as I started to sob uncontrollably.