A tough goodbye

Flashback - August 30, 2006

It was supposed to be a reunion, a chance for the nine grandchildren of Joe and Ruth Tingley to catch up, reconnect and celebrate the heritage that we all have in common as cousins. Instead, it turned into a farewell.

Two days before the reunion, my cousin Dawn announced she and her husband, Chris, had sold their home at 46 Prindle Avenue. in Ansonia, Conn. The house was old and needed work, and the yard was much too big for a busy mom and dad with three kids. It made perfect sense, except that this was our grandparents' home.

This was the last connection to our heritage, the last connection to Joe and Ruth and their four children - Phyllis, Edward, William and Robert. They were all gone now, and we really only had the house and our annual gatherings. But with our families spread across the Northeast, most of us had not been there in years.

Back in the 1930s, Joe Tingley and his brother Ed bought a piece of farm land and built two-story houses side by side with big front porches and stone foundations meant to last forever.

There was a small barn where my father raised a goat during the depression. There were two chicken coops for eggs and poultry and a garden that once covered most of the three acres of property during World War II. It was now just a small vegetable garden that my cousin Kevin - the youngest of the cousins - maintained more out of habit and tradition than any real need.

In the back corner of the lot, my grandfather had built a horseshoe court, where his brothers gathered on summer Sundays to pass away the time.

I can remember as a small boy sitting in lawn chairs, sipping lemonade with the women and hearing the clang of metal shoes in the distance, punctuated by rousing cheers and laughter after a big score by one of the teams. It always seemed to be dark before the men came back with big smiles on their faces to gulp lemonade and recount the competition from the court.

It was a unique place, a fascinating place for kids to run around and explore while our parents visited with the folks.

It was really surprising the house had not been sold sooner. When my grandmother died, my Uncle Bob moved his family into the house. When he passed away, his family stayed, and later his daughter Dawn and her husband moved in with their family. It seemed like it would stay in the family forever.

The house is showing its 70 years of age and looks smaller than when we were all kids.

On Friday night, my brother, my cousin Kevin and I wandered through the weeds in the overgrown horseshoe court in the gathering dusk. We stood there for 10 or 15 minutes, looking, listening as if we expected to hear those wonderful sounds of summer again and knowing it was the end of an era, knowing we would never see this place again.

Each spot in the yard, each room in the house was a trigger, setting off a flood of memories for all of us, some the same, some different.

The kitchen table was still right by the window where my grandmother Ruth used to hold court. She always sat in the chair on the left farthest from the door looking out at her bird feeder. As a teenager, I mowed her lawn, and I can remember countless hours of conversation about the family, about her life and my own hopes and dreams.

The living room, which no longer smelled like pine needles, still triggered memories of a long ago Christmas when my Uncle Bill carried my cousin Gail and I around the room. And it was over against that wall where I said good-bye to her a few weeks before she died. Can it really be 24 years ago?

One after the other, the memories returned with such clarity. Each of us having a different experience.

One by one, we took our kids by the hand to the entryway to the front porch. There, at the base of the stairs, was something to which we all could relate. Crafted into the hardwood floors in brown wood was the family name - TINGLEY. It was permanent, the legacy of the family for the future, the one thing that would not change.

Dawn told me she made the new owners promise that they would not remove the name from the floor. They agreed, saying that it was part of the history of the house. That made us all feel good.

Dawn told me she cried herself to sleep that night after seeing us come home, after seeing us recount countless memories from our childhood. It was also the first time in several years that all nine cousins made it to the reunion.

There was one more thing I had to show my son. In the basement bathroom, long covered with layer after layer of white paint, you could still see the jagged outline where someone had carved the initials "ET" with a small pocket knife.

I explained to my son Joseph, that my father, Edward Tingley, had carved his initials there as a boy and had gotten in a whole heap of trouble. My father had showed me the initials years ago when I was just a boy.

Joseph nodded and walked away, unimpressed. I took a photo of the wall with the initials in the dark and damp basement. Then, with the cousins calling for a group photo of all 28 of us upstairs in the living room, I ran my fingers slowly, gently over the initials one last time.