How Our Parents Met

They were both staying at Tamarack Lodge in the Catskills. My mother had a sunburn and had white cream on her face. My father struck up a conversation by asking her what was wrong with her.They dated a few times, but broke it off.My father was 30 years old and enjoying playing the field. Then his mother died. He told my aunt at the shiva that he decided that it was time to settle down and that he was going to call "that pretty girl he had dated a few months earlier."After the shiva, my father discovered that his picture of my mother, which had been in a pile of photos of various girlfriends, had been set aside, apparently by his mother, before her death.My parents married 3 months later, on December 31, 1950.My father came from an Orthodox German Jewish family. My mother's family was neither Sabbath nor Kashruth observant, but mom told my father that she would be happy to follow his tradition, and so she did, above and beyond the call of duty.Irrelevant but sad fact: The rabbi who performed the marriage died the next day, and the marriage notice in the New York Times read, "The ceremony was performed by the late Rabbi Ploni."