As Far Away from Home as Possible by DeAnn Louise Daigle

When I think of home
I think of warm and fuzzy.
Why would I want to leave it?

Home is where I was nurtured
And made to feel secure.
Home was fine. The Beauty of
The Woods, the Sound of Birds
Chirping. Mom and Dad downstairs.

The cats in the shed. Jackie,
My bird, in the cage. And
Eventually the dog I’d always
Longed for, Chillie – all living
Elements of my warm and fuzzy.

Mom reading fairy tales to me
And Dad reading me the funny
Papers on Saturdays. Warm
And fuzzy. Why would I want
To leave home? I didn’t.
I wanted home to remain
Like this safe place forever.

Home wasn’t all safe and secure.
There were awful edges, sharp edges.
Dad’s drinking, Mom’s having
Awful bouts of worry. Their
Fighting left me feeling nothing
Was safe; the world could
Come crashing at any moment.

There was unspoken tension
I never knew was there.
I felt it without knowing
What it was.

Dad didn’t drink, Mom told me.
He wasn’t like the other men
Who sat around and drank beer
When they weren’t working in
The fields or potato houses.

Dad didn’t sit around and
Drink with them, he hid his
Drinking from me, from Mom.
Only, she knew. She suspected.

She also suspected, when he disappeared
For two weeks at a time, that he
Was bedding down other women.
She hinted at this only once –
Implying that he’d slept with
Her brother’s wife. How did I
Understand this? I’m sure I

Didn’t. I may have been 5 years
Old at the time. He’d been gone
And she was upset. So much is
Feelingly blacked out for me.

Only years later as I reflected on my
Attraction to a particular boy cousin
Did I begin to think that maybe
He’s Dad’s son. My aunt had eight
Children and her husband, Mom’s
Brother, could have easily just
Counted this one as another of his own.

But, did he suspect? He was in a beer
Stupor most of the time.

Did all of these people live a
Closed harmony in suspicion
Of one another?

If not consciously in my mind,
Then, feelingly in my heart, I
Took in all of these tensions and
Suspicions, lost hope, lost
Affections, lost warmth and feelings of
Distance inside.

I took them in, gathered them up –
All of these surmises and speculations
And bits and pieces of gossip gathered
Here and there, of overhearing. I
Took them in and tried, tried very
Hard to piece together the story of
My life, because their story was

So much my story.

Of course, there was then my
Mother and me and how maybe
My cousin, Dad’s nephew,
Might be my real father. That
Too was tucked away in my
Eleven year old mind. Such
Quietly explosive stuff borders

On the mystical.

The church was
At the center of all of our lives.
It taught us right from wrong,
Good from bad. The priest was
Passionate at the lectern and
Told us these Beautiful sad stories
About Mary, the Mother of God.




We all heard the stories and I
Wept right along with the
Priest, and the men, who came
To the store after Mass would
Poke fun at the crying priest.

But, people came from all the
Surrounding villages when during
The month of May, the month
Of Mary, we gathered in cars
Reciting the rosary. Cars filled
The church’s parking lot at the
Shrines he had built,

The first one to our Lady of Lourdes –
A grotto with the statue of Mary and
A statue of the kneeling St. Bernadette on
Beautiful white rocks with running
Water the priest had had piped in from
The brook that ran behind the
Grotto. People came from miles

Around to see what the priest
Had done. He enlisted the very people
Who laughed at him to build all
Of the shrines that would follow.
St. Joseph, the Sacred Heart of Jesus,
St. Therese of Lisieux.

In the summertime, there were
Processions on Sunday Evenings and
We walked around the large
Illuminated rosary at the edge
Of the water, where there was
Open ground and the grass was
Very green.

Ave, ave, ave, Maria, ave, ave
Ave Maria.

I have demons. I battle demons
In the night, and it’s all quite
Mystical.