10 things I like about a Miss America bouquet and having a friend that still signs my paycheck every month since 1995.

(This is an entry from my 10 things I like about today Facebook series and it is longer and more personal than I usually share here on LinkedIn, and it is usually accompanied with 10 images)

Today my mentor Fran is officially retired with a party from the University of Minnesota.

If you go back through MY personal history, in the top 10 people that chaperoned ME on becoming ME. Fran is in the top 10.

She is an esteemed friend, who guided me through myriads of snowy, slippery, and rocky ridges.

Including encouraging me to get tested for learning disorders in a way that didn’t make me feel small.

I was not diagnosed with dyslexia, until I was 28 and in college and had children.

Go ahead and make all of the jokes about math and dyslexia, but living with a learning disability is a trip. Especially gross in learning to write in multiple languages as part of your college experience.

Being undiagnosed was the rotten cherry on top of a very confusing childhood. As an emotional burden it was the hardest invisible daily challenge that revolved around me MENTALLY being me. Undiagnosed dyslexia produced deep challenges in life trying to fit into presets of education.

BUT I was still born ME. so I was determined to dance in a bigger light. Unfortunately it was the light of a dragon.

College was THE dragon I had to face and I was shaking in my boots. Working two jobs and sometimes three, late nights closing at the bar, weekends doing breakfast shifts on two hours of sleep, single parenting, and surfing through life with very little money or family support.

Fran gave me permission to change the things I saw were problems, like being hungry with only $97 a month of food stamps and talking to the press about that problem so students could have access to a food shelf, running out of things like soap and washing my clothes in a tub and putting laundry in as a necessity for students parents, no access to daycare subsidies should be in lawmakers minds, sitting on boards for government programs that were run by people who never had to LIVE on those social programs and request they add a chair for recipients. The list is endless.

Fran gave me permission to raise my hand, raise my voice, raise my ballot, raise my pen and raise my petitions. She saw it as normal to push forward my radicalized ideas to ask for and build more out in the world.

I COULD build parent study groups on Sunday that included daycare and a potluck, I could be ( and was) the first student parent to take my child to learning abroad and ask for additional subsidies, give group tutoring, I curated a plan and redid the student daycare to bring it up to snuff with all the learning stations so that it was awesome. I could and DID

Fran taught me to not equate poverty with being less then.

Having less NEVER means being less.

College was life changing for every part of me, and having a friend that was older to guide me was heaven sent. Fran was and still is warmly watching as we both have the privilege to celebrate growing as a lifelong accomplishment.

Fran also introduced me to Dr Camacho who taught fractions with the “ tortilla methods” and as a college math instructor who understood my dyslexia, he also understood that in word problems and economics I could find a superpower.

I had to take rudimentary math everyday for two and a half years to GET to 12th grade level at age 28 to age 31.

The good Dr. would tell me, don’t bother with memorizing formulas, that would be short lived in your life. ALL the big problems in the world that need solving have math with stories in them. Dyslexics understand storytelling.

Understand the story and then do the math.

A tool I use EVERYDAY to make the world better.

Understand the story, then do the math.

I had never had somebody keep adding to my plate. Fran just kept handing my resource after resource. Sometimes a leftover sandwich from a meeting and other times a chance to apply for a scholarship, an extra hour of pay to go to a meeting, or a chance to meet someone important like Bill Clinton.

I kept listening and I kept accepting.

If Fran thought it was a fit- I just said yes.

I still do.

The most precious resource Fran and I shared was glee.

Thoughtful, silly, sweet, and mundane glee.

The amount of times I have side ached with gut wrenching laughter over the craziest things that happen in my life have been with my friend Fran.

I gave her an award once, when she was very very sick, I didn’t think that she was going to get better because the medicine for the illness made her diabolically sicker. She fought like a very quiet Tiger with a mystical power from deep within.

For years would say to her, “Thanks for not being dead.”

She knows it’s true, cause I worried many nights that she was going to die in that bed, and she was just as scared. Both of us exhaled when she kept waking up.

All illness is healed, but it was hell.

Abundantly, I still get to see Fran's very distinctive signature from one of my teaching jobs that I’ve had for all of these years. She still goes in to sign my check from Headstart. She used to sign my checks when I was in college, and back then I was a science tutor with work study money and a single mom.

Fun fact; Fran had more themed dinner China than a bridal planner had lists. Every color. I have over the years given at least 10 families those full sets of dishes with Project Elf. I can look back over the years and point to “ Frans dishes” on so many young mothers table. It’s a pretty thing to give. Latonya has Frans gold silverware set and will NOT let anyone use them. it makes me giggle.

USE THE GOOD DISHES PEOPLE!

There are moments that we all treasure in friendships, and the ones with Fran and I are definitely on the roller coaster of life that most people don’t normally encounter.

I love it, when Fran is nearly at her wits end, because something has degraded to a point where she just doesn’t know what to do. She gets an eyebrow lift and a roll in her glance that shows her patience is over stretched. Like the day she opened ( and quickly shut) her garage door and ran back into the house to call me.

The old couch that she put in the garage was now infested with rats, and she was going to pay my son $10 a rat to get them out of the garage.

OUT definitely meant DEAD.

That kid couldn’t get in the car fast enough! He was counting cash as we drove an old Toyota Camry to her doorstep. Two miles could not have gone slower for an eight-year old boy with a rat catching job.

Sadly, there were too many rats to send in a child… they were indeed terrifying and awful. We had to get a different plan. We hid in the house afraid to think about how many rats we could NOT see.

We paid my son a one rat payment of $10 to go check the basement with a flashlight.

All clear-thank god!

She could sleep in peace.

I could sleep in peace on her behalf.

Or a different day where she had a yard sale at her house and my son came to

“ help/not help” and randomly he came home with two kittens he bought for 50 cents.

A DEAL OF A LIFETIME!

Fran shrugged her arms.

They were so cute and he was so happy.

Those two cats actually went to go live with a different friend and my son might have sold them for $5 each… brother cats that had a wonderful life.

Fran let my son spend his 8 year old dollar like a millionaire.

Just like she let everyone be a millionaire.

Fran and I have been to so many parties. Hugged so many people. Cheered so many lives. So, it was especially great to be at HER party for HER, cheering, and hugging.

I had a vision that I wanted for her bash.

It would be a jillion times of awesome if I could pull it off.

I clearly saw the image in my mind...

I had to spend a bit of money and not look back.

I had just ONE CHANCE to get this moment PERFECT.

It HAD to create a Vanity Fair styled bouquet of every type of flower.

Fat, thick, and ridiculous.

I was definitely building that floralpalooza gift for her retirement party. Luscious and as diverse as my friends life. It took me an hour to pick them out, and with the help of wonderful skilled people we made them into a delightful bunch.

I was dreaming of a picture of her holding them like Miss America.

Little Fran with. BIG flowers.

I got my wish.

She was already wearing a sash when I got there!

Beautiful.

There are very few people that deserve a Miss America size bouquet as much as my friend Fran. Fran who has guided everyone from everywhere all these years.

There she is, beautifully radiant and on to the next adventure.

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