Finding family, part 1

Maybe there’s a quaint, ranch-style house, on about a half acre somewhere in Hazardville, Connecticut where I’d feel right at home. Or maybe that particular house is gone now, blipped out of existence in the name of progress or blight or maybe a discarded cigarette.

In 1952, though, mounted next to the front door on pattern-cut asphalt shingles, was a mailbox. In boxed letters beneath it was a name: “COUSINS.” My name.

I have photographs. My aunt sent them to me in a book she created about our family, almost all of whom are strangers to me.

It was a modest house with small wooden decks at the doors and hardwood trees out back. Other than “COUSINS,” there were no embellishments.

In one of the photographs from 1952 — page 8 in the book about my family — a young couple stands in front of the open front door displaying a swaddled infant for the camera. The couple is my grandparents, who I never met, despite only a few hundred miles between us for many years. They died. The infant in the picture was my father, Timothy Francis Cousins. He died too, in May of 2007.

The house in the photograph reminds me of another house in Paris, Maine, where my parents moved to raise my sister and I. Six months after my birth in Willimantic, they left behind a lot in Connecticut. My father severed ties with his family and for 30 years ignored letters and phone calls from his mother. My mother, who was adopted and who left home as a teenager, did the same.

Gifts from my father’s mother to my sister and I arrived on Christmases and for our birthdays. We enjoyed the toys, but the clothes rarely fit. Our grandmother didn’t know our sizes because we never saw her and she never saw us. Until I received the book from my aunt two months ago, I didn’t know what my grandparents looked like. Still, when I study the details on their faces I feel connected. They look full of hope and love, so proud of their white ranch and new baby boy.

Another photograph — my favorite — is of my father at about two years old wearing a checkered coat zipped tight and wool hat. Dad's holding my grandfather Francis’s hand for balance. Grandpa — it feels wrong using that word for a stranger — is crouching in the photograph, smoking a cigarette and studying his son. He wears a glowing smile I know well, now that I have a son of my own.

I know almost nothing of my father’s family life, except that he had a younger sister — my aunt, who sent me the book — who says they had a happy childhood. It didn't occur to me to miss my grandparents until I was well into my 20s. I didn't find it strange that most of my friends had extended families and I didn't. When people asked, I said most of them lived in Connecticut and left out the fact I’d never met them.

I remember when my grandfather died in 1993. Dad received a little box of mementos, mostly watches and pins my grandfather earned working for a telephone company. Dad cried, something I’d seen only a few times. He wore one of the watches for a few years. I sometimes wonder if he ever told anyone it was his dad’s and whether he left out the rest of the story, like I did.

My grandmother died in 2000. Dad announced, inexplicably, that he wanted to go to her funeral. He and I drove to Hartford to honor a woman who spent her life reaching out to us and grasping nothing. A few of the mourners — people I’m related to, presumably — kept glancing at us and whispering. No one said anything to us.

I didn’t realize what I’d lost, but Dad did. He showed with a drinking binge. The drive back to Maine the next day was a great opportunity to ask why he alienated his mother, but I didn't. I should have.

In 2004, my son Caleb was born. I have a picture of Dad holding Caleb, his mouth twisted in a word and his eyes ablaze with wonder. He holds two fingers slightly apart as if he's saying "teeny tiny."

Witnessing Dad’s love for his grandson made me miss my own grandparents for the first time in my life. I wondered whether they ever missed me and what they told people about their son and grandchildren. “Oh, they moved to Maine 25 years ago.” Did they leave out the rest?

In the book from my aunt, there’s a picture of three women sitting on a couch: my grandmother, my aunt and my great grandmother. My great grandmother holds a blond teddy bear that I remember having as a young boy, tattered and threadbare. I’d never known where that teddy bear came from until I saw that picture. My aunt, sitting in the middle, holds a baby while my grandmother leans close. The baby is me.

All three women have a proud gleam in their eyes that only a new baby in the family can bring. It’s the same gleam my father had for my son and that, under a mailbox and the word “COUSINS,” Dad's father had for him. It's familiar now.