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  • Writer's pictureBluenose Jewess @60

Smiling at the dentist's

Updated: Mar 10, 2020

I don’t always come home from the dentist smiling. But I’ve been smiling since I walked out of the dentist’s office this morning, smiling when I got into the very cold car, and while getting the groceries. Drove home still smiling, unpacked and devoured my grocery store sushi, and now I’m back at my computer, still grinning like a fool. Because something incredible happened at the dentist’s today.


Yes, incredible as it is for this small family, more lost cousins have been found. (Maybe I should stop saying that I have a small family, even though I’m an only child, as was my Dad and as is my Mum. We’ve been having a run on “new” cousins this past year, me and Hubby).


Here’s what happened: I’m contemplating whether or not my gums are starting to hurt and what I’m going to eat for lunch, and digging my phone out of my purse to book the next cleaning appointment, when the sweet blonde young woman behind the counter says, “I have to tell you something.” Now normally when I hear something like that, what’s going to follow is along the lines of: “Guess what? Your husband played at my wedding!” Or, “my mother told me that your husband used to teach her cousin the cello!” Or, some such musical/cellistic/Shimon story, or sometimes, it’s an “I was in school with your son!” story. But it’s never about me.


Instead, she said: “I was looking at my Nana’s old photos, and I asked my Mum, “why would Nana have a picture of our clients, Peggy and Shimon, and their family, in her album?” Even still, I thought to myself, “here comes the wedding part,” but no…..this story was about ME!


Her Mum didn’t get Shimon’s name quite right (“SHIME-on” to rhyme with “SHINE-on,” as in Harvest Moon…), but clearly, her Mum knew us and why we were hanging out in Nana’s album. It’s because her Mum is (was?) my Dad’s first cousin, his cousin Judy. Cousin Judy who I have been searching for, for say, at least the last couple of years, on and off.


I’ve Googled Cousin Judy, trying both her maiden name and what I believed to be her married name. I’ve searched Facebook. I’ve tried public records, finally giving up, and concluding that this woman has no online presence, as incredible as that is to someone like moi. But I did find another cousin, Pauline, who I hope I’ll see this summer when I get up to Pugwash, one of my first questions to her being, “What about Cousin Judy?”



A lot of this re-interest in finding Cousin Judy came about when my Mum discovered a cache of old photos in her guest room closet of my Dad and his family, photos we had both never seen before. There’s my Dad as a boy, a photo of him with a broken arm, with a clearly loved dog, with relatives, some of whom I recognize, but some not. Acting the fool with his goofy friends, posing with a beer bottle in front of a monument. And a precious one of his very young mother holding him in her arms, a newborn, the smile on her face huge and genuine.



Now that my Dad is gone, as is his mother, how could I ever know who else was in these pictures? If only I could find Cousin Judy, it’s possible she would remember some family members and fill in some blanks.


I’m trying to picture the look that must have been on my face in the dentist’s office this morning, alternating between shock, tears and laughter. We traded stories. Katie (my cousin, twice removed?) scrolled through pics of her Mum and Nana on her phone (I knew them immediately), and in that way that only Maritimers can do, we bonded over place and family. She loves the area and their old farmhouse like I do. The old farmhouse that I have driven by, countless times every summer and fall, wondering, “who lives there now?”


“We do!!” she told me, enthusiastically.


It’s right beside the old cemetery, where my grandmother Marion and her brother Griffin, a WWI Vet, are buried. I cleaned their graves last summer, not knowing that my car was parked metres from the property that still belongs to my family so many years later. Listening to our stories, the other receptionist started crying and then shared a story about her own childhood summers, returning annually to her Gran’s in rural Newfoundland. And again I thought about the importance of that sense of place, the smell of a place, and how some places, forever, will always be Home.


I came out of the dentist’s office, and I haven’t stopped smiling all day.


Sometimes, you know your family is far away and it’s so sad, and sometimes you’re unaware they are very close and we just need a clue to find each other, like a photo seen with fresh young eyes.


Just last evening I was re-reading my great uncle’s diary, thinking about family mysteries, family connections, and wondering again how would I ever find Cousin Judy. Less than 24 hours later, I’m learning she was here all along, in my own city, with her beautiful daughter calling to remind us about our dental appointments: “Hi, it’s Katie from Dr. Tam’s office. See you Thursday at 10?”


Yes, Katie, see you, and your Mum, and the old photos and scrapbooks, and the memories and tears and laughter. See you all, very soon.


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