fran

Fran. Dear Fran. Every morning at 4 a.m., before even the farm roosters began their morning crow, she lay in bed and began her planning. All the things. So many things. Strategic planning, hurried planning, responsible planning. Her solar plexus ached with a strong desire to do well and mean well, but she always felt cold, stiff, rigid. She was alive yet exhausted, reliable yet relentlessly busy, integrous yet demanding. A rumble of nausea rose in her gut, interrupting her thoughts, if just for a moment.

Her red-haired Scottish husband, who lay just a few inches to her right, was oblivious to her early morning list making narrative. He always slept hard, physically exhausted from all the work he needed to complete on his wife’s list from the previous day. Each morning, he would wake up slowly, yearning for silence. Quiet. Instead, he would wake to her intense enthusiasm and her lists. The obligation to make her happy crept in and yet, day by day, he felt more and more distant from his dear Fran.

Fran dreamed of sitting on their front, wraparound porch of their enormous hand-constructed log cabin where she could view their fenced in areas for the animals that needed boundaries like goats and sheep. She would also see the vast, unfenced areas where the other animals ran free like dogs and fowl. But she was too busy to sit for they had developed a beautiful working farm growing food for themselves and others, just like the one that Fran’s grandmother left behind in Switzerland so many decades ago.

Grandma’s name was Francis, and she began working at the age of five. She had become a furious list maker, like her daughter and now her granddaughter Fran. Three generations of never relaxing, busy, busy, constant movement and agitation. All three women felt irresponsible, guilty, and quite literally nauseous if they stopped for any measurable amount of time to take pleasure in their lives. No time for that.

The ‘list maker’ in all three women appeared grandiose, lacking in vulnerability or warmth, yet the hidden hunger that powered its intensity longed for softness, love, and security. The degree to which list making constructed itself into a viable identity is to equal degree the longing for safety and love. Grandmother Francis and her daughter could not see this for they were loyally blind to its construct, driven to play out the role from beginning to end. Fran, however, had her husband to thank, for he saw. He wanted Fran to enjoy all that he had created in her name. Loyally blind to her lists and to her heart, his exhaustion woke him up and he spoke.

So that morning, in bed, the farmer turned to his wife and whispered, “Let’s not waste the best years of our life Fran.” She immediately felt nauseous, spinning and alone. It was a feeling that her mother and grandmother knew as well. A feeling of desperation and fear that the women in Frans family conquered through making and checking off lists. Who knew when this way began. Fran had heard a bit about her great grandmother, that she too was caught in an inner whirlwind feeling of ‘something is wrong, so get it right.’

Fran allowed herself to feel that familiar feeling, asking her dear husband to hold her tightly. She breathed. She cried. He whispered that nothing is wrong. Everything is alright. She asked him to repeat that over and over again. And he did. He loved his Fran and the way she loved their farm and their life. Fran lay quiet and very still as her husband offered a blessing to the women from whom she came. He honored their way as the old way. A way that served their fierce fears and got them through. They would be remembered for their contributions and given a place in their hearts.

He held Fran tightly and whispered that it was okay to let the compulsive list making go and know that she is intrinsically bound to her Swiss lineage too. She sighed. And relaxed. She could feel a bit more playful now, and softer. There were things to do on the farm, but Fran knew that they could wait. And so that morning they stayed in bed taking pleasure in each other, if just for awhile, on the bed that they had built together.