In the photograph, my mother isn’t looking at the camera. Instead, she’s looking down on her nephew, who must be about two at the time. He holds onto her hand. He’s dapper in his playsuit, his chubby legs bare from knees to ankles where his short white socks and his baby shoes anchor him. Still, he clings to my mother’s hand, and he looks directly into the camera, as if to say, “We’re coming.”

Now, both my mother and my cousin have come and gone. This photograph, though, remains, proof that on some long-ago summer day this aunt and nephew occupied a space on this earth. Did he reach for her hand, or did she take his in her own? No matter what the answer might be, here they are, and what I see in this photo is love. My mother might look prim in her white lace-up shoes, her dress with an A-line skirt, a rounded collar, and what appears to be a pin at her throat. Although I can’t see her eyes, I can feel the tender adoration from her as she keeps watch over her nephew.

She’s a single woman at the time, a schoolteacher who helps her parents in their general store in the evenings. I estimate it’s around 1940, and if I’m right, she’s about thirty. She doesn’t know about my father, and how one day, he’ll linger at the store, helping her close up after everyone is gone. She doesn’t know she’ll marry him in 1951, and four years later—surprise!—I’ll come along. I’ve written about the circumstances of my birth elsewhere, so now I want to concentrate on my mother on this day when someone took her photograph while she was with my cousin. I see in her shy smile how much she must have wanted love and how embarrassed she must have been to long for a husband and a child of her own, she who had spent so many years teaching and caring for other women’s children.

How sweet it must feel for my cousin to hold to my mother’s fingers, to trust her to keep him steady, to sense the love from his tenderhearted aunt. I know I’ll look at this photo time and time again just to feel the love emanating from it.

My cousin was a kind man. As a child, I gravitated toward him. I wanted to sit by him at the table when we had family dinners. Once, I left my cap pistol at my aunt and uncle’s house, and when my father drove us back to retrieve it, I found my adult cousin holding it while he watched a western on television. I like to think he was keeping it close because he knew I’d be coming back, or maybe it gave him a chance to remember his own childhood. At the very least, I choose to imagine that toy gun connected us in some way. Now, after his death, I think of the precious, tenuous bonds between family members and how they can persist in the memory of those who survive.

It was a beautiful summer day. The ivy was in full leaf. My mother and my cousin were wearing their Sunday best. They stood still for the photographer, held in time forever, just about to take a step into the rest of their lives.