Family

Soon we’ll be bringing my parents’ ashes home to Tecumseh, and the preparations are bittersweet. I can’t tell you how sad I am, yet the clan gathering is lovely. And informative. I’ve just learned through my cousin Yvette that the Parents, Gilberts, Leclairs, Lepages and Lemires are all related to Auntie Maisie. Back in the day, we French Canadians, like Ashkenazi Jews, preferred our own. Thankfully my family avoided our turn at the one chromosome too many lottery. But this does explain why, at the tender age of three, I donned a tiny pirate patch to correct my lazy eye.