Introduction

Pat Conroy knows me. I am the sister Savannah in "The Prince Of Tides". Barbra Streisand had no business directing that movie. A man from the South who has had a nervous breakdown should have been the director of that movie, a man like Mr. Conroy. A Yankee woman does not know what really happens behind closed screen doors of the descendants of the South. The book tells the truth. The movie doesn't dare go there.

I will go there. I will document my journey back into the deep south.

I will question whether I should be so raw and vulnerable and honest with what I am about to tell you.

I actually took a short story writing class for three years when I lived in Los Angeles. So many students had trouble coming up with something to say, something to write about every week. I could write a novel about a three hour visit with my Bigmama in a nursing home and I could write an entire chapter about how magnificent it was to put her in a wheelchair on a crisp Thanksgiving morning and take her down streets she hadn't been down in years. I could spend an entire long paragraph telling you about the sound of the acorns popping underneath the wheels of her chair.

One of my short stories actually made it to publication but it was all due to the amazing editing of my wonderful teacher. He said that so many famous authors come from the south because southerners take their time and speak a lot about very little. Southerners tend to drawl everything out, not only their speech. My wonderful short story writing teacher made me better by trimming me down. He would take out sentences and paragraphs to give my stories more effect. I do not have the time to edit myself. I will give you the long southern version of what I am about to experience. This will be my fat story and it is true to me. This is my reality and I had to have a nervous breakdown to realize that it doesn't matter if no one else witnesses or admits to the realities of my observations and experiences.

I feel that I can be more objective because I have lived elsewhere. I have traveled and I have also moved back to the south as an adult. I have a child's perspective and I also an adult's perspective.

I have been called a nigger lover, I have been ridiculed, my mother disowned me for two weeks because I dated a man who's father was half black (which would make my date one quarter black), I have planted watermelon seeds at the end of summer and seen them mature at Christmas time.

I am going back to my origins for ten days. This begins my journey into the past.