Patterson - The Bold World: A Memoir of Family and Transformation

I VE ALWAYS BEEN TOLD that women are powerful, tenacious, and important. That we pull from limitless places. That we make magic wherever we goshining light into the darkness, forming impenetrable shields with our love. That beneath moments of weakness are endless reserves of strength.

But I, woman, am feeling none of these powers.

A friend of mine once told me, Parenthood means delivering optimism to your children. But Im filled with only pessimism about the future. Its clear to me that dark envelops light, bad beats up on good. Women do, in fact, break. Smiling requires an effort I just dont have. And joy? Its packed up its bags and gone elsewhere.

I need to stay with you for a while, I heard myself saying to my mother over the phone, weary from the last few years. I just need to rest.

Im here, she said without pausing. Come as soon as you can.

I bought two plane tickets to Atlanta the next day.

Although my parents brought up my sister Ramona and me in the North, my South Carolinaraised mother sprinkled our upbringing with Southern dust. We were city kids who spent summers with our grandmother in Georgia and who grew up appreciating hot bowls of grits and long family gatherings in the kitchen. These were the things that held a kind of magic for methey were essential elements of a well-maintained soul. The South, I knew, had the power to fix anything. There was spirit in the soil. I believed that whatever my problems were, the South would always know what to do with them.

But as I grew into adulthood, that magic had gotten lost. Somehow, I needed to find my way back.

At forty-three years old, I am exhausted. Run ragged by the pressures, the expectations. Turned fragile in the face of hardship. Kept up at night by thoughts too scary to speak of during the day.

With my grown-up life in full swing, there is never time to pause. I have five children, a husband, an ex-husband, a schedule that often leads to grinding sixty-hour workweeksand a crippling fear of the life Ive created. To cope, I simply set a goal and dont stop until I, the bullet, hit the target.

Im in need of what the South holds, of the spirit in the earth and of Mama and her steady ways. Needing, toomaybe most of allthe women. My women. Those matriarchs of my lineage whose stories, voices, and faces I often lean on like prayers, especially during times like these. Times when Ive lost myself completely.

And so I return to the South once more, hoping to breathe the Atlanta air and remember where I come from.

My mother lives in a sprawling suburb called Peachtree City. Her neighborhood is made up of neatly designed suburban dwellings and quaint dirt-covered back roads that wind around the subdivisions golf courses and muddy green ponds. She left New York for Atlanta when she and my father divorced in 1989, and after a time moved into my grandmother Glorias house, where she remained after Gloria died. While this house isnt quite the same as the one I visited during my childhood summers, it still feels like home. And even after Grandma Gloria passed away, the place still holds affectionately to her memory: her furniture, her smell, her love.

When Im at the house, my mother and I dont pull out all my baggage and spread it across her table, examining each piece to determine how to fix it, as my dad and I might have done. She isnt one to tackle obstacles that way, and I dont go to the Southor to herfor that. I dont go to strategize. I go because being there resets something in me.

I havent told her everything. I havent even had the time yet to fully put into words why Im here. But she can see the strain on my face: My hair is thinning, Ive lost weight, and I have new lines and creases shes never seen before.

Ive left four of the kids at home with my husband. Georgia, my first child, has come with me. Ive wanted to spend time alone with Georgia for months now, but the little ones, the business, and Penelope, my third child, demand so much of my time. Penelope, my determined toddler.

Despite the awkwardness that has grown over the years between us, I always eventually call Mama when things get bad. After Ive exhausted all my own methods and relentlessly tried to push my way through the problem. After Ive looked to my girlfriends for help. After I no longer even want to be saved. When Ive thrown in the towel and accepted that the thing Im fighting is just way too big to defeat, I call Mama, knowing that theres nothing more to do than yield. Mama is good at yielding.

During this visit I spend most of my afternoons alone in the sitting room. The space feels like a time capsuletheres no TV, no computer, no gadgets or telephones. Rather, its filled with the same beautiful furniture that adorned the study in Grandma Glorias old housefurniture that was passed down from her mother, and her mother before that. Generations of memories live inside the wooden skeletons of those pieces, and Gloria was a meticulous preservationist. Theres not a tear or a scratch on any of them. After my grandmother died, my mother was reluctant to disturb anythingthere was just too much of Grandma Gloria still lingering there. Instead, she opted to leave things as they were. If Grandma were to walk inside this room today, shed know exactly where to rest her feet.

The sitting room is filled with booksmy grandmother had thousands of them; her collection was enormous and never-ending. Shelves upon shelves of weathered paperbacks and sun-faded hardcovers fit snug next to pristine first editions signed by her good friend JimmyJames Baldwinwhom she first met on a university campus in the 1960s when the South was still reeling from The Fire Next Time. Grandmas books were always around her, sprawled across her desk, stacked on the floor, tucked under her arm. I would often catch her in the study of her old house rereading six books at a time and scribbling notes in the pages, wondering what she was writing down.