Distant Cousins

I remember life in Chapeau long ago

When I was just a blonde-haired girl

Running through the milkweed fields

Sliding on the newly fallen snow

My cousins came to stay with us for a year

We fought, we played like cats and dogs

For hours on end each night and day

Counting my brothers, there were seven of us to fear

There was Jamie, Eddy, Robert and Colleen

Baby Melisa was not yet born

Tommy was the youngest boy

But he stayed with Uncle Rupert and Aunt Irene

We walked that rough old Ottawa River shore

We climbed the high Laurentian hills

Stole apples from Willis Brisard’s tree

And hid in a shack to avoid the household chores

We ran those Chapeau streets from dawn ’til dusk

My mother’s search would never end

We kept our pace one step ahead

But sometimes we weren’t always fast enough

Then all of a sudden they went back home again

So Gerry would say “Let’s walk that road”.

It really wasn’t very far

To go frogging in the creek with our best of kin

A train was bound for the province of BC

Uncle Ron was journeying west

Taking our cousins thousands of miles

Leaving behind my saddened brother and me

We all grew up in worlds so far apart

As if we’d never met at all

No time to talk or even write

Now I can’t erase this longing in my heart

Perhaps again one day our paths will cross

I’ll strike it rich and take that train

From the Valley to the Rockies grand

In search of distant cousins I somehow lost

And when that engine finally rolls around

We’ll tighten the knot in ties that bind

While turning the faded family page

Filled with childhood memories of Chapeau town