ChI.1.a: Frissa

{February 1974}

"Hello, Patty"

"Huhr naym iss Pafrissa. Pah-Freess-Yuh," Pafrissa, not Patta. not Daddy Pat, baby baby sister Frissa.

I looked at Matt, my step-cousin.  I liked him. He was blonde and skinny and athletic and tall and let me hang out and watch while he raced mini cars. He was nice to me.

"She looks just like Uncle Pat," he said.

NOT Pat. Pafrissa, Pafrissa, she looks like mommy, her name is Pafrissa. Look at mommy's baby picture. Pafrissa, not Pat.
{/memory}

I never did call her Patty, not once.

That's what her cousins called her. It's also what her friends called her, so I guess that means that is what she called herself, even though that didn't occur to me until now, when I typed it. I've always called her Trish. It was close to Tess, and that was my Irish Great-grandmother, and that's who I wanted her to be - a little Tess, not a little Pat.

Too bad I didn't figure out what she was calling herself sooner. To me, she will always be Frissa because I want her to release herself from her father. Lose all he taught her, unbecome the parts of him she actualized. I want to untangle her from the fears and phobias of my step-family, undo her exposure to casual criminals, cause her to see how she was treated differently by him because she was OF him.

Please read the Intro