The Frustration that is Fran

My mother has been doting on her uncle so much since my aunt died (his sister, not his wife -- not that that means the grief is any less, just different) that we've taken to calling her Franna Nicole Smith. (I have some very people in my family who came up with that one -- I cannot take the credit.)

So I called Fran yesterday morning (I had to check on my immunization because we've had a couple students come down with the mumps on campus) and I asked if she and my dad wanted to come down for dinner in the next weekend or two.

And she said, oh Uncle Henry would like a change of scenery.

So I said, well, he's welcome to come, the stairs will be hard on him, but I was actually thinking that it would give you a break, a Henry-free day.

So she said, well he really looks forward to our Sunday dinners.

So come on Saturday, I said.

Then she called me last night, just to tell me that she had a really good day, very peaceful and calm. Oh, okay. It seemed to come so out of the blue that I wasn't really sure how to respond, didn't understand why she was calling me.

I asked her if she had talked to my dad about dinner -- she said that they would be coming on a Saturday, and would give my brother Henry duty that day.

I can't say enough how much I love my mother, but at the same time, she creates these dramas, she creates these situations where she thinks she's needed more than she may really be.

Case in point, my niece was on the phone with her the other night (and I heard my niece's version before I heard it from Fran). She was over-tired, she felt like my dad was getting ignored because Fran has been doting so much on Henry, and Jenny said she "was worried about grandpa."

Last night, my mother told me that when she talked to Jenny the other night, "oh she was so upset, she worries so much about me."

Perhaps these sessions of getting her head shrunk will give her a better grasp on reality. Or perhaps, we will get another round of Fran thinking too much about other people and not enough about herself and suddenly we'll have a monster on our hands again.