francisesesesin Boston
How is it exactly that we both call each other Francis? A fascination with the Gertrudes and Henriettas of the world: bad names usually indicate an awkwardness. How many Gerties have you known/ Hermans, Olgas, and Francises? We all have an awkwardness with us, but it seems to be spilled out, released, when the Francises come to town.
I read the story the Francis wrote about our meeting, and it really was that pretty. The Francises hold two opposing parts of the same heart. Whereas I was the one with the proverbial turned literal broken heart, I had turned those situations inside-out to not let them shatter my spirit, and essentially my maturity was hyper-spaced forward, as well as my understanding for emotional well-being and support. I tried to teach these to Francis, and I did, but not without learning a bit from that Francis, too. That Francis represented a lot of what I angrily spit out as stolen from me: my mother’s rules often sat on my chest and suffocated me for all of my life. When I finally escaped, it was but a tease, and my ticking time bomb ripped me back into that reality of “no, no, not for you”. Freedom for me has almost always had an exclusivity for me; in the same manner that you get kicked in the teeth when you don’t fit into the mold, freedom has always been the candy at the end of the broken string.
When I met that Francis, I was able to recreate my youth, and what I always read was special about being 16. I was really never quite “allowed” to be 13, 14, 15, 16, or 17. When I was 18 I got to taste a bit of that precocious teenage thing, primarily because I moved out of my house senior year of high school. That lasted until 19, when I got a little taste of what it means to have cardiac surgery. It seemed then that all of those promises spit out to me about being a kid, going to college, “having fun” were not afforded to me, and I was relegated to a ward filled with the true elderly, already having lived a full life, then dealing with the errors of heredity, bad eating, or whatever the case may have been. I was just a kid, angry that my innocence had been finally stripped to the bare bones of “maturity”. I was thrown out to the wolves in a proverbial sense because people around me didn’t understand, and those who pretended to just ended up pissing me off. I still have a very strong jealousy for those who had the opportunity to be kids, go to college, and basically get on with things as usual.
That Francis never pissed me off about her understanding of my situation, because she had her own foundation of hell that she sprouted from. She allowed me to finally be a kid, without suffering from the errors of bad judgment (I was like the mom) and basic irresponsibility that comes from not knowing the difference. I laughed more in the years that I was with Francis than before, and I will always be grateful for the opportunity to taste the innocence and sparkling that comes with being a kid.
That Francis may be my crowning achievement; as I stated last night I guess I already had a kid. She has accomplished more and been driven more than any single person I have ever known. I am so proud of her for having had the ability to sustain, achieve, and overshoot all of the goals that she had for herself.
I love that Francis.
Francis…
I love you, too.