Tim & Frannie

By Amalia

"What I've learned from their story is not the sadness of knowing love isn't perfect, but the magic of its ups and downs."

Amalia: Over the years of asking my parents about their love story, I've grown to love it myself. So when I sat down with them, I asked them about it once more. I giggled at the mention of their meet-cute, and smiled throughout all the rest. I then asked about some of the difficulties they face in the relationship, and here that is.

How was meeting you guys' parents, and like the kind of cross-pollination of the cultural differences?

Tim: Good question.

Frannie: Wow. My mom was not—it's not that she wasn't happy about it. I think my mom operates more from a place of fear, and her own experiences of life as a woman of color. So her first reaction was, “His family will never accept you. You should break up with him before you get hurt. And it'll never work out.”

Tim: Purely based on the fact that you came from your background and I'm white and English.

Frannie: Yes. And then I'll just say that my, my dad had a different reaction. Peter. Um, my dad, Peter said—cause I told my parents about him because after two weeks of knowing each other, we decided we were gonna go traveling together. So that was my mom's response. My dad, Peter's response was more of excitement. He said to me, “I always wanted to travel, but your mom didn't want to, because she was too scared. And I wish I had. And, well, if you travel together, you'll know if you really like each other or not.” And then he sent me a really great sleeping bag and backpack in the mail.

Tim: Yeah, that's… that’s classic your dad. When was the first time you met anyone from my family?

Frannie: Tim almost died, and that's how I got to know… really, Emma, first, and a little bit Bella. I would speak to them on the phone. Because after Tim and I went traveling, Tim went traveling by himself, and then when he came back to England, he got really, really, really sick, and he almost died. I was supposed to pick him up at the airport—

Tim: And I didn't show up!

Frannie: No, that morning, I think, that I was supposed to go there, or the night before, I got a call from Bella, saying, “Tim is in the hospital. We don't know what's wrong with him, but he's really, really sick. He's not coming home.” So there was a lot of phone communication between me and his sisters because I wanted to go and they were kind of saying, “Okay, not yet, not yet, not yet. And this is how he's doing today.”

Tim: And so I was basically oblivious of how my family felt about Francine at that time, cause I was so sick in the hospital. I mean, I've since obviously come to know how much they, um… loved her and, you know, got on very well, very quickly. I don't think there was ever, there was never any issues, like, cultural issues or something like that your mom might have had, I think. You know, my family was, I think just happy for me because I think they'd also seen me, kind of, bouncing around…

Amalia: Being a bit of a slag.

Tim: You know, having a bunch of girlfriends, but nothing would ever be more than like, six months long or nine months long. So, and I was also physically moving around and traveling a lot. So I think once they saw this develop, they were like, “Oh, he's settling down a bit.” But I think also they were super impressed by Francine's devotion. She was, obviously cared about me so much, you know, and she was desperate to come over and see how I was doing and all that, but I was really too sick for that. But they obviously realized how, you know, involved she was, and how connected we were because of how persistent she was and like, you know, always calling and always calling. So I think that very quickly communicated that this was not just a kind of casual relationship.

Frannie: It only got crazier since then.

Amalia: My parents persevered through both cultural differences and my dad's near-death experience. What I've learned from their story is not the sadness of knowing love isn't perfect, but the magic of its ups and downs. This kind of knowledge has been something I've held in my heart like a treasure, and fell back onto for comfort in times of heartache.

It's a story that I've been telling friends for years. Besides being a great love story, it's the story of my existence. I'm the manifestation of two people's love, and because of this, their story has become a part of who I am, ingrained into my identity.