When my mother and I were driving into Los Angeles during her visit a few weeks ago, we passed through Van Nuys.

“My old friend Donny Becker was from Van Nuys!” mom crowed, and then told the story about how the summer of ‘69, which she spent as a Catholic girl working at a Jewish summer camp, changed her life. She’d gone to Catholic school for grades 1 through 12, I guess Camp Benbow was her first introduction to a group of people who liked to sit around, play guitars, hug each other, and sing.

In other words, it was at Camp Benbow that my mom first became a hippie. Her life would never be the same.

One of her fellow counselors was a guy named Donny Becker. He and my mom were quickly friends, and I guess he taught her the guitar chords to “Summertime.” My mother has been singing that song for as long as I can remember, and when she included it on her self-released CD, Tribal Call, she even dedicated it to “my Jewish friends at Camp Benbow.”

Mom, knowing what a massive geek adept internet researcher I am, asked my help in finding Donny Becker during her LA visit. We did a quick Google search and eventually found our way to this page.

My mother squinted at the photo. “Well, it could be him,” she said. “He did have curly hair…I mean, it’s just so hard to say! I haven’t seen him since he was 20 years old!” After reading the bio, she decided it was indeed the Donny Becker she knew: he went to Santa Cruz, and had worked with children since college. Plus, “best talent: giving hugs”? Come on! This had to be the guy.

An e-mail was sent, and eventually my mother was sitting in my living room, chatting on the phone with Donny Becker. They madly tried to catch up on the last 30 years, and at some point, Donny mentions his 20-something daughter, who’d just started a new African dance class.

“Oh, that’s funny,” my mom says. “I just went to an African dance class with my 20-something daughter this week.”

Do you see where this is going? Turns out that Donny Becker’s daughter is in my dance class. And that Donny Becker himself had been at that very dance class the week before my mother attended it with me.

Who knew!

Naturally, mom wanted me to introduce myself to Donny’s daughter. Weird thing is, I don’t know anyone’s name in that class. It’s not like we all sit around and say, “Hi, I’m Ariel. And I like to dance!” I spent the last couple classes trying to figure out which girl was Donny’s daughter.

“Did you meet Rachel yet?” my mom asked me the last time I talked to her.
“No, mom. I can’t figure out which one she is…and what am I supposed to say?! ‘Hi, our parents were friends in the late ’60s?’”

Well, last night I finally figured out which one she was.

“Are you Rachel?” I hazarded, in-between crossing the floor doing our chest pumps and hip gyrations.

“Ah-HA!” she said. “You must be my dad’s friend’s daughter! He’s been asking me constantly if I’d met you yet. I kept being like, ‘Dad! What am I supposed to say to the girl?”

HA!