At the beginning of Thanksgiving, my dad and I spent hours combing through genealogical records, trying to find his grandmother.  During the pandemic, I read Dani Shapiro’s book The Inheritance and had opened a subscription on MyHeritage.com trying to uncover my own family history.

My dad remembered that he called his dad’s parents Grandpa Loui and Grandma Becky. But he didn’t remember his grandmother’s maiden name or where she was from.  He told me that when they visited, they always showed up without announcing themselves and his grandma would prepare more food than anyone could eat in a week.  But strangely, you can’t search for a Grandma Becky who cooks too much and sometimes shouts in Yiddish on MyHeritage.com.  I found countless Grandma Becky’s in countless historical records but couldn’t find enough information to claim any one of them as my own.