Though I don't believe human events travel in cycles or that good or evil events happen in pairs or trios, two odd events happened recently, two days in a row.

The first was last night. I was giving a lecture and reading in a town southwest of the town where I've lived for nearly 30 years, when a man who looked familiar (I didn't realize why) approached the table where I was signing books after the event.

He laid a copy of my first novel, The Deep End of the Ocean, in front of me, and opened the cover. There was a stamped name and address.

"I'm sorry," I said, "But why do you have a copy of my uncle's book?" My Uncle Frank, who died some years ago, was my father's last surviving brother.

"I found it on his desk after he died," the man said, "I thought you'd recognize me. They say I look like your dad.'

And he does look like my dad -- he looks just like my dad. But I hadn't seen my cousin Guy since we were teenagers; and the emotion and surprise I felt nearly made me weep. We hugged like..well, like long-lost relatives. He introduced me to his wife; and we promised to correspond. When he left, I felt that a hand from the past had reached out lightly and reassuringly on the back of the neck.

Just this morning, I got an email from a man called Bruce Minty. A Canadian (my father's family hails from Newfoundland), he told me he was my second cousin, that my grandfather, Herb, and his grandmother, Hepzibah, were brother and sister.

When I was only fifteen, my grandparents, Herb and Bess, took me to the tiny fishing village of Twillingate, Newfoundland, from whence my family sprang. It was like a voyage back in time. Great tuna washed up under the house; which stood on stilts to withstand the storms. Fishing boats went out from the harbor to the legendary Grand Banks; and the town's buildings straggled down the side of a hill to the water like a handful of weathered replicas in an antique Christmas village. Milk was delivered in glass bottles. The town ambulance was a panel truck. People went for big shoppng trips in the family motor boat. Tea was served each day at five and supper at seven.

It was a wild, beautiful, lonely place -- and I would give much to be there again, now. Foolish girl I was then, I was so lonely for my parents, among these odd and old-fashioned folk, that I went back home days before I should have. But I didn't go home before meeting my Aunt 'Eppie, who was old then, and as much like a character from Anne of Green Gables as any living human I have ever met. She lived with her sister in a house of ornate frame around ancient pictures, and horsehair sofas with crocheted doilies on the armrests. At that point, she and my grandfather had not seen each other perhaps in 25 years; and I don't believe they even exchanged a hug, although Aunt Hepzibah was kind and welcoming in her reserved way.

My grandfather was not a warm nor amiable man. in fact, he could be a downright crank, the only person I've ever known -- besides Ebenezer Scrooge -- to use the word "Humbug!" in conversation. He shared other characteristics with Mister Scrooge as well.

But he had a puzzling fondness for me, though I was not the only grandchild, nor even the only granddaughter. He once said I had I had more than the ordinary amount of gumption for a girl, and that he liked that in people (He certainly had more than the ordinary amount himself, having lived until age 94). And while I suppose I "loved" my other grandfather, my mother's father and one of the world's gentlest people, more than I loved Grandpa Herb, I had an awkward fondness for him, which I never quite managed to express. He never quite allowed it.

In any case, this cousin whom I never knew existed offered me a photo of my grandfather as a young man, in his pilot's uniform. He said "Uncle Herb" was a very handsome man, and I've no doubt of it. He was a very handsome man, with a back straight as one of his own black walnut trees, when I knew him. Mr. Minty also offered me a copy of a Methodist hymnal inscribed 'Herbert Mitchard, Twillingate, 1909.'

And for the second time in as many days, at a time when I think I needed that sense of being part of something that preceded me and would outlast me more than I ever have, I felt that same slight touch at my back.

It seemed to say, as my grandfather would have said (he would not have said more), "Steady on, girl. Trust yourself and who you are."

So i thank you, my cousins. There are very few Mitchards in the world; we're a small family and every one an eccentric. But I'm comforted to be one among them.

Jackie Mitchard