Her name was Placida– my mother’s mother– but to me she was Pat-Pat, the fixture of our family vacations, waving from her back porch to greet us as we turned onto the gravel driveway that led to her door. She was soft and welcoming (as the best grandmothers are defined) without being overly indulgent, and going to her house meant coca-cola in bottles and playing with cousins and swimming at my uncle’s pool and all the bliss my small heart could hold.
During our visits my mother became younger, once again the baby of the family, the little sister, the darling daughter, and as the days stretched on in our East-Texas surroundings, her voice settled into a familiar accent and made itself comfortable. We teased her about it, but only because we loved the glimpse it gave us of the person she was before she was Mom. Inside my grandmother’s house, layers of love surrounded and encapsulated me, the tiniest matryoshka doll within the cocoon of generations.
I never thought much about Pat-Pat’s life in my self-saturated youth, never wondered about her upbringing or probed her for details of her hopes and dreams and joys and sorrows. I’m not sure she would have appreciated the impertinence of the questioning anyway. It was enough that she was the woman whose heart had shaped the heart that formed my own.
Nowadays, though, I want to piece together what I know, to make a whole person out of her, to catch a glimpse of what bits I might have been blessed enough to claim for my own, beyond noses and brows and what formal portraits can give me. I rifle through photographs and pepper my mother with questions and speculate extensively.
Placida was a child of the new century, arriving at adulthood in the roaring 20’s, a time I imagine as wild and frenzied and perched on the edge of possibility, when new discoveries were met with excitement instead of glassy-eyed indifference by a society inebriated with technology and bloated by progress.
She was born and raised from French and German Catholic stock, the sixth child of nine. She lost her father, a jovial man who ran the town’s telegraph, when she was eight, and was raised by her no-nonsense mother into a sensible young woman with a prodigious musical talent. Her family was well-respected and genteel. She met my grandfather, surname Patterson, and married him at the age of 20, in the year 1924.
Those are the facts, as I have been told.
Poring over family photos reveals a bit more of the picture, gives wings to imagination and fleshes out the story. Here we have Placida, on a summer outing in the hills of East Texas with a group that included my yet-to-be grandfather, a man who loved to take pictures and later made a living out of doing so.
I love this photo for so many reasons. I love it for the fact that her hair is in braids and she is poking around with a stick in the water and she is barefoot and she is wearing overalls. I love it because her smile says to me that she is a woman besotted with her photographer, whether she knew it herself at the time or not.
Another picture from the same day shows the photographer himself, claiming space next to Placida, whose right hand is in parts unknown. It is the only photograph I have ever seen of him where he looked the least bit uncomfortable, and whether it is from the sun in his eyes or the suddenness of the shutter, or the fact that he was sitting on her hand, I will never know. I do know that he looks just enough the part of a bad boy to make me like him immensely.
I like to believe that we would have been great friends, this braided beauty and I, had I belonged to that earlier era. I imagine myself in the picture too, poking into streambeds and giggling over the attention she was getting from Mr. Patterson, lands sakes!
This girl joined her life to the just-bad-enough-boy, and together they raised a family of six through the depression and war years, the optimistic fifties and beyond. She lost her beloved photographer in 1974, when I was six years old, and I saw her cry. That event is one of my most vivid childhood memories; it was raw and real and startled me with the realization that some things were so sad they caused even grown-ups to discard composure.
Placida lived another 20 years after him, outlived 7 of her siblings, and saw the gracious house she raised her children in levelled by the city to make way for a hospital parking lot. The building had suffered from too many structural impairments to warrant moving it, so she bought a mobile home and infused it with so much joy and life that we hardly missed the old place; if she could be philosophic about it, so could we.
As I became an adult, visits to Pat-Pat’s grew less frequent, as tends to happen. She welcomed the first few of my children before she was unable to differentiate one from the other, and the last time I saw her was a heartbreaking event that impressed upon me the truth that death is most often like birth, painful and confusing and lasting far longer than seems fair.
When she died, I felt that my childhood was officially over, although I was already a married woman with five small children at that point. But I was not the grandchild of anyone anymore; the outermost layer was gone from the nesting doll and I was pushed forth with only my mother between me and the largeness of the world.
One day it will be only me there, the outermost shell around generations spiralling down through the years. I hope to be like Pat-Pat to my grandchildren, larger than life, a solid and steady fixture no matter how much changes in the world around them, always ready to peel the years away and let them be children again.
Just as she is in my mind, standing on the back porch of a house long-gone, waiting to welcome me back.
Beautiful
Beautiful! That could be the first chapter of your book. Have you started writing yet?
Kari B
I have seven chapters or so…thanks for asking…
It’s interesting how as I am raising my three, soon to be four, I spend a lot of time thinking about my grandmother who is the mother of nine! I wonder what her life was like before the kids started coming. I wonder how she managed various issues I know fast. Thankfully, she is still with us and I talk with her often, trying to pull bits of treasure from her when I can. And those family recipes too!
I had to wipe away tears before I could type. Beautifully put, Jenn.
GEEZ!! Get me all emotional!! That was really really great. Although I came along much later and never even got to meet Grandpa… I too have many MANY fond memories of Pat-Pat. “Ooooooo I teeeeell yoooooou!”
When she died, I was so worried the trailer would be sold. There was just too many memories and “feel good” moments associated with it. Then Mary-Pat moved into it and I was very relieved.
One of my favorite memories as a kid at her trailer was putting a sheet over the air conditioning vent and getting inside when the air came on.
You also forgot to mention how her arm kept waving even after she’d finished saying goodbye (or hello).
Such intrigue in those old photos. And I see such family resemblance to you and some of your kiddos in her face.
You should totally submit that. Sublime writing, my dear. Absolutely beautiful.
Not fair, you made me cry! We live in East Texas now where my grandmother and her siblings were raised in the next town over. Sometimes when I am driving around I try to figure out the pieces of my grandmother’s life and wonder what it was like when she was young and doing the same things that I am doing all of these years later. Thanks for the good cry.
This makes me wish I lived near either of my grandmothers, so I could begin rifling through all their old photos again, the way I did as a teenager. I used to beg them to tell me the stories behind each photo…
Sigh. Okay, some ladies (and Chris)cried over this, but I REALLY CRIED! Oh how I miss my Mommy. It never comes home to me clearer than in the written word, esp. yours. I loved how the photos came out too. Keep going (and I’ll run my tear ducts dry).
lovely…just lovely…
Thank you so much … for the story and also for the memories it awoke. ~chris
Really beautiful. I have some memories of Pat Pat and the house. It was a big adventure to visit there from NJ – so different and exotic.
I also met your great gramdma and it was so amazing to meet someone mearly 100, who still cherished the same Bible she brought west with her on a covered wagon. That was major food for my imagination.
You have such a gift! Your words make me smile & cry at the same time. Thank you for sharing;)
Beautiful, Jenny. Your words moved me.
This:
“But I was not the grandchild of anyone anymore; the outermost layer was gone from the nesting doll and I was pushed forth with only my mother between me and the largeness of the world.
One day it will be only me there, the outermost shell around generations spiralling down through the years. I hope to be like Pat-Pat to my grandchildren, larger than life, a solid and steady fixture no matter how much changes in the world around them, always ready to peel the years away and let them be children again.”
… is amazing writing. I hope you do write a book someday.
Not being someone’s grandchild is one of my biggest “fears”.
Amazing post. I still have tears 10 minutes later.
So incredibly beautiful!
That was, indeed, bold and beautiful, sister-o-mine. Ah, Pat-Pat! I remember sitting on her back porch at Main Street, carving tater pipes and making nickle bets on how many rounds we kids could go in a bare-knuckled fist fight with Ollie-B. Pat-Pat would shoot whiskey sour out her nose every time Ollie-B knocked one of us out (often!). Everyone wondered why we never had any teeth!
Yeah, so when are you going to write this “book”? And more to the point, I had a dream that you were mauled by a bear. What’s up with that?
I think YOU should write a children’s book, actually. “The Adventures of PatPat and Ollie-B” or something. It would be so sweetly disturbing.
Why, Jeuneois, you fried us up a mighty fine mess o’ scribbles, there. Reminds me of the times when Ollie-Bee would “fry us up a mess o’ scribbles” (toenails). Usually wound up with a terrible case of “writer’s block”, but we never complained.
Did I ever tell you about the lucid dream I had before River was born, about going up the stairs in the old house to Paw-Paw’s room and finding him there, and how I sat with him and listened as he told me about life and death and fatherhood and love and fear, and to not be afraid? The curtains in front of the attic door were billowing around him and he seemed to glow, emanating such love and compassion that I wept in my sleep.
Then, the bucktoothed sea bass chimed in with a few “words” of his own, and the dream kind of went off in another direction. But for a while there, it was really comforting.
Paul, you and Matt are giving all my readers some very valuable insight into the strangeness from whence I sprang. Thank you. Also, you never told me about the dream, why haven’t you written a song about it?
That was marvelous…it gave me chills.
Jenny—Your Mom said tears would be shed.What a
wonderful tribute to your grandmother. We think the
world of your mom & Dad. What a great bunch of youngens
they raised. You truly have a great command of words. So
talented.
Jenni, This tribute is wonderful. Your words paint a picture and involve every one of my senses. Keep writing!
Lisa
Cousin Jenni-I don’t know if you remember me but Dad (Johnny) mailed me copies of your story about Papps. I couldn’t see the pictures very well so I decided to just come on here. I would like to tell you how well you write and the words about our Grandmother could not have been said more eloquently. You made this 51 year old tough guy cry – I have so many good memories of Papps and Grandpa too. They were so special to me. Thank you for sharing this. If you write anything else, please let me read. My email is jaypatt1@swbell.net
Please give my love to your mom and dad. Take care – Jay Patterson