Frandato

There is a rhythm to loving a person with dementia. One has to learn to be present again and again in the same moment, to relive it as if it is always new. One has to stop arguing—to stop finding fault with the details of the story, and to listen deeply to its rhythm, its shape.

In the midst of trying to figure out how to make a long-term difference for the residents and volunteers running the gerokomeio in Ikaria—in the midst of the anguish of feeling as if there was too little we could do—we learned also to be present. 

We learned to listen even when we didn’t understand the words, to pay attention to the shape a resident’s eyebrow made, to the way she leaned in or leaned back, the tone of her voice. When I was with the residents and students, I did my best to translate, though my Greek is far from fluent—but I couldn’t be everywhere at once. After awhile, though, the students began to recognize which story they were hearing, which narrative they were entering, by the way the story was told.

Take A, for instance. Her narratives always began with a question. They always ended with the words “Yia skepsou,” which means, loosely translated, “Just imagine.” The question—and the ending phrase—were invitations into the story-as-circle. They gently pushed us into the force of the story’s river of sound and meaning, and we soon began to swim, to recognize where we were going. We’d been here before, but each time we passed the same scenery, something small had changed.

The story A told perhaps most often always began with the question, “Where are you from?”

Whoever was sitting beside her would answer, “America.”

When I was the one who answered, she would squint her eyes, even though she couldn’t see, and turn her face toward me. “But you’re not like the others,” she would say. “You speak Greek.”

“Yes. My father and my mother’s grandparents grew up in Ikaria.”

“Which village?” And so it begins, the story of how we come to know each other if we are Greek—which island, which village, which house.

“My father is from Magganiti, as was his father. My mother’s mother was from Evdilos, her father, from Karvostamo.”

“And your father’s mother?”

“From Frandato.”

“Frandato? I am from Frandato, too! What was her name? In which house did she live? My place was at the foot of the mountain, closer to the village square…”

And so, the story begins. And so, we name our beginnings, and not only that, but we enter the beginnings before our own.

“Do you know how Frandato got its name? Let me tell you. There was a man. His name was Frantas. 

He had a wife and 10 daughters. 10 daughters, and no sons—imagine that. They lived toward the top of the mountain. You know which mountain I mean, don’t you, since your grandmother was from Frandato. You can imagine where he lived. The family needed to get water from the well, but it was a long way away. He loved them so much that he didn’t want the sun to lay eyes on them. So he (depending on the day: made them cover their bodies and heads; built a tunnel; had a row of trees planted all the way to the well…).”

And then, she would turn to me again, and look me in the eye. “Can you imagine,” she’d say, “having that kind of love for your wife and daughters?”

“No,” I would say, “I can’t imagine.”

“And that’s why the village is called Frandato. It’s named after that man, Frantas, who loved his wife and daughters more than anyone else ever has. Do you know, even now, that the sun does not shine in some parts of Frandato, because of the mountain’s shadow? Just imagine.”

She would rest her head on her cane then, tired out from telling the story.

Once, one of the volunteers running the home paused to listen in.

“That doesn’t sound like love to me,” she joked. “Why would he make the cover themselves up? 

Wouldn’t that make them even hotter? And anyway, why didn’t he go get the water himself?”

I translated what she’d said, and the students sitting with A that morning laughed. Finally, the narrative was being questioned, disrupted, made into an entirely different story by the listener. 

That is the nature of stories. We, the listeners, give them whatever meaning they come to have. We can make them mean whatever we want them to mean. They change shape each time we hear them, depending on where we hear them, and when, and who else is listening.

A was known for getting angry, even violent. As the students laughed, I found myself holding my breath, wondering what she would do. When the small circle of young women gathered around her had stopped laughing, she just repeated, “That is the kind of love I can’t even imagine. Can you?”