ANNIE LEE POTTS BRYSON

When I think of guiding spirits, I see Annie Lee and her sister  Willa Mae in the back seat of the car in which we were riding to  Asheville where we were to lead workshops in corn-shuck doll-making,  lap quilting, and poetry writing, under the auspices  of the WCU Extension Department, now called, or so I believe,  Distance Learning. We'd never laid eyes on each other before,  and I think we were all three a bit amused and amazed that  we were going to be teaching our crafts at the Asheville Mall!   We were not your typical mall-goers, believe me.  Who would  have ever thought that somewhere over the rows and rows of fancy  stores we rarely ever entered, there were classrooms where people  could learn about mountain crafts and poetry writing?  Over the weeks that we journeyed to Asheville from Cullowhee, we shared our stories, stitching them into  a tapestry we took back home with us.  We became friends, but more than that, I like to think we  became soul-sisters, so that no matter how long might go without seeing each other, we never had  to try to re-acquaint ourselves with each other.  We made a connection that lasted through time.   One of my favorite bluegrass songs by Bill Monroe is called, "The Walls of Time."  He sings of being  able to hear his gone sweetheart through those walls.  I can hear Annie Lee and Willa Mae, too,  through those walls that on some days seem as sheer as gauze curtains, especially this time of  year when the leaves are barely hanging on and the light calls to us to look up and beyond our daily tasks. I could say that Annie Lee left us last September 6,  but I don't think of her as gone,  because I know she is not gone from my life nor the lives of her daughters and those who loved her. The greatest honor I can claim to this day is being asked to read at her funeral a poem I'd written  for her 80th birthday.  Her daughter Norma Medford Clayton asked me to helped them celebrate the day with a poem, and so I cast back to my memory of our drives to Asheville.   A BIRTHDAY POEM FOR ANNIE LEE'S 80TH Annie Lee, I still remember you and Willa Mae as being like two birds chirping in the back seat as we drove to Asheville and our classes at the Mall. Your stories  kept me listening through the stops and stalls of traffic.  Christmas oranges and summer dabblings in the creek, the  litany of family names that you recited every trip.  Your talk of cornshuck dolls and quilts  fell on my ears like some endangered speech our daughters' daughters might not ever know, the turn and pull of thread that snaps too easily, if we're not careful.  But your thread's still going strong, it's made a life-- each year a perfect round of stitches, eighty now, a shining wreath of days that we all come to gather round and celebrate:  Happy Birthday, Annie Lee!  This poem became part of the Memory book that Norma and  her sisters Carolyn and Anna compiled, and when Norma  began to think about her remembrances of her mother before  the funeral, she had to confess that" ..."Mama, when I started to write down my favorite memory about you I couldn't narrow it down to just one…I had so many memories of you that I couldn't choose.   So I wrote down all those that were dear to me.  I was so pleased that you liked it and wanted it to be read at your funeral.  I have revised it since you are no longer with us but the memories are still the same." That beautiful litany of memories will cover several posts over the next few days, to give my visitors time to savor and celebrate each portion.