Lucia Frangione

For those of you more experienced with melon pain, tell me, is this a migraine? I am at my lovely friend’s house. Jovanni, Leanna and I are reading over tidbits of scripts we’re working on. Leanna goes over hers, I am engaged, happy, dull headache that’s been bothering me all day. It increases to a PMS level when we read my work, I am irritable and dissatisfied with my rewrite. Why? Why am I so grumpy? I apologize. WOW. My head bursts into a mushroom of pain. I don’t say anything but they can see it on my face. I…

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When I think of crossing over into film, I have this idea in my head that I’m a young person. I feel I’m just slightly beyond “emerging” as a writer and actor. People may see me as a dewy eyed burgeoning artist. And then I remember how long I have been at this and I look in the mirror and shockingly see a woman in her forties. What?! When did this happen? In my heart I’m about twenty eight years old. I remember once I was driving with my grandpa at the wheel and a man his age, in his…

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Today I heard from my young lady of Shalott. She is half sick of shadows and short a decent Lancelot. She writes me about every two months. She is willowy fair and lovely and loved. She’s articulate and soulful and suffers from a mental disorder, she knows. But knowledge doesn’t shake the darkness. And it doesn’t give her an answer to, “Why should I live?” I’ve had a hard time writing lately because I am desperately compelled to seek out an answer. There are a few people in my life suffering from crippling depression. Christmas followed by January…tends to be…

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Cookum, Baba and Nonna waddle towards the hot pool, three rutabagas. As soon as they hit the water, they become three beets. I instantly love them. How did they meet? There they are, cackling together, one with a rubber cap, one with false teeth. The other showing cleavage down to her knees. Beside them is a tattooed biker dude with a drippy “wet dog” handlebar stash. He’s chatting up a skeleton in a bikini telling her how much it hurt to have the cop kick sand behind his eyes. The skeleton is the one who makes me sigh. Her black…

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Day two of learning Italian. Dog and cat are masculine but bicycle is feminine. Why? I don’t know. Because you can put it between your legs and ride it. There. I won’t forget that now, will I? Lately the days are all about “working towards a goal”. Someday I will figure out my allergies, someday I will get into that bikini, someday I will speak this language, someday the phone will ring and tell me I have work this year, someday Leave of Absence will get produced again…and what happens to the present when so much is focused on the…

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Nora and I are having our first Italian lesson today. We pull up our matching chairs to the computer and tap on our Rosetta Stone, una bambina, una donna. I am not ashamed of many things, but I am a little ashamed that I haven’t learned Italian. With a name like Lucia Frangione I can’t tell you how many people GASP in shock that I don’t speak my father’s tongue. There were a few brief impatient lessons with Dad when I was young. He’d tug on my hair gently with his big wide hands and say “capelli”, tap his tooth…

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I have a great visit with the family we used to live with in Richmond. Somehow Derek and Tara Jean make suburbia a hip choice. As artists, they are being counter culture to their counter culture. Dave Sims and Rene Joshi pull this off too in their sweet little Winnipeg home. Tara Jean can openly celebrate a holiday in a motorhome and TOTALLY get away with it. Rene can do giant paintings of festive cheese balls. How? I am not that strong. I see a white picket fence and my sense of self starts to shrink to the size of…

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Ah mischief. I shuffle into the kitchen this morning looking for the cup of coffee I have decided not to have and instead I have a headache. My kid surprises me from behind by jumping on my neck with the best idea ever in the whole universe. “Mom, let’s invent our own secret handshake!” Why can’t I be a morning Mom? If I was Michelle Leiffertz I would have made at least three types of chutney by now, sewn next year’s Halloween costumes for the neighbours and read, staged, and discussed Euripides’ Electra with my brilliant twin girls. Unfortunately Nora…

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Today it was back to work as a maid and I brought Nora along. I figured it wouldn’t be so bad for her to see Mommy doing something other than dancing singing and being all glamour puss on stage. At one point I caught her watching me scrubbing the floors on my hands and knees. “You work pretty hard, Mommy. Are people fussy?” “Not really. I just want to do a good job.” “Oh.” “That way I’m proud of whatever I do. Whether it’s write a play, act a role, make a dinner or clean a floor, I know I’ve…

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I ask my New Years Resolution what it needs to be this year. I am expecting “punctuality” or “work out 4 x a week” or “learn Italian”. Instead, she winks and declares,   “Make more mischief”.   My soul – surprisingly – agrees. Once again, God is everything I don’t expect.   I am rather confused on both fronts. Why mischief? And what does that happen to do with my soul? Last year it was “fiscal responsibility” and it was a success. Should I not continue along the path of security and sobriety? Mischief indeed! There are so many more…

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