Olive skin, long deep dark hair that curled into ringlets, bright brown moon eyes, and a pirate smile, Fran Janichik was beautiful. Oh My God she was beautiful. She also had M.S. when we were in college meaning that she would simply topple over as we walked down the hallway for no reason other than she couldn’t control her legs.
When this happened she would sit there on the floor, with that beautiful smile, embarrassment on her brow, and that just made her flawed self all the more beautiful.
I would reach down to pull her up and she was tiny and was like a feather. Then she would throw her arm over my shoulder so that she wouldn’t do it again and I would walk her to her class before walking myself to mine.
Once I walked outside to see her staring at a bunch of trees from the History Building at Georgia Southern College. She stared intently and was lost in thought.
“Hey Fran,” I said. “What are you doing?”
Cow eyes looked at me for a minute and she finally said, “Hey Micheal.” I think that Fran was the first person to ever call me Micheal. I was always just “Mike” but Fran saw the universe in a different way.
”Have you ever noticed all of the shades of green?” she asked, turning her face back to what she was looking at before I bothered her.
I stopped and looked and for a blissful moment, I saw the world as she did. There were a hundred evergreens next to the building and we would pass them every day and they were…green. I stared and saw a thousand shades of green as I have never seen the color green. I saw it as I had never seen it.
From the perspective of someone who is dying.
Fran was far too young and beautiful to die but she knew that she was. And she was so appreciative about everything going on around her and so graceful about her embarrassing falls that you couldn’t help but love her as much as you have ever loved anything.
“Micheal,” she asked me as only she could, “before I die I want to get drunk.”
So we did, listening to the Dobbie Brothers whom she really didn’t care for but she loved the Kenny Loggins version of “What a Fool Believes” and she talked loudly about that night and we laughed and were stupid as are people who drink too much.
“Micheal,” she asked again later, after we were much closer after getting drunk together, “before I die I want to make love.”
And we didn’t.
She was so fragile and I would never hurt her. I was scared to hurt her. I think that this was the first time that I touched love.
When my college friends came last week after all of those years, I asked if they remembered Fran. They all shook their heads and said that they remembered her name but they couldn’t remember her face.
I do Fran.
You taught me green. You were beautiful and you left major impressions on my life that remain with me still though you are thirty years gone.
And today I sit on my beloved back deck and stare at the thousand shades of green and I think of you.
Thank you, Fran.
You are still alive inside of me.
