BRINGING IT TOGETHER by DeAnn Louise Daigle

It feels like nothing is ever resolved.

Just when I thought that in knowing

My past more clearly, as in Bud

Actually being my biological father,

Something would be completed.

Rumors seem to have basis in fact –

At least in some fact, if not all.  That

Hearsay, that rumor, that gossip

Repeated to me by my cousin when

We were ten or eleven or nine years old

Had its basis in something, and something

In me knew this, even if what he told me

Was not true.  Yet, why would he have

Bothered to tell me?  He wanted me to

Know.  He felt compelled, on some level

Of his youthful humanity, for whatever

Unfathomable reason, that I should be

Aware of this information.  He believed

It.  And so I lived with his knowledge

Unable to do anything about it or with

It for some four decades when – just

Maybe – I was ready to find out for sure –

And for true –

Bud and I wept on the phone.  It was true.

What Carl had told me that day in the old

Boarding House, which held so many

Memories, so many stories of our roots and

Acadian history – so much of that big story

Of our ancestors – it was there on a warm

Summer’s day in one of the spare bedrooms,

Where who knows who had slept.  On that

Day he told me the rumor he had heard, so

Convincingly, and his cousin James was there

To confirm it.  Yes, it was true, it was very

True.  I have loved you all these years.  Sonorous

Regret in his voice echoes still in my mind.

Bud was my father – but he was not – nor

Would he ever be – my Dad.