MOUNTAIN HERITAGE DAY

              

ANNIE LEE BRYSON: GUIDING SPIRIT

Memories, Part One, by Norma Medford Clayton

Presented at Annie Lee Bryson's funeral last September.

Norma Medford Clayton, or Norma Bryson as I knew her when she was my student during my first year of teaching English at Western Carolina University, composed a memorable tribute to her mother Annie Lee, which she read at her mother's funeral.  Norma's words brought Annie Lee back to life for all of us assembled there. As one of Norma's teachers,  I could claim some small credit, or so I like to think, for this beautifully constructed essay.The credit, however, is all Norma's.  And Annie Lee's.  I am grateful to Norma for allowing me to feature it on this blog.

All of my memories of you are about love for family and friends, love for the Lord, love for crafts, love for tradition, love for animals, and love for learning.  Your love for us was evident in all that you did.  The values and morals that you and Daddy taught us have stayed with us through the years.  Daddy did hard work on his job and he also worked hard when he got home - chopping wood and making a garden.  He was always content if he knew the light bill was paid, we had food to eat, and he had food for his dogs.  That left the rest up to you - you saw that the bills were paid, money was saved for our education and future, food was raised, preserved and cooked, our clothes were made, washed and ironed, quilts were quilted, and that we girls stayed out of trouble.  What a job!

I can remember how you used to milk morning and night in all kinds of weather.  I remember the pan you used to milk in and how the handle was warped from all the years you held it.  I can also remember you saying that being swished in the face with a cow's tail was the reason you had such beautiful, soft, unwrinkled skin.  The times you allowed us girls to go to the barn with you were a treat.  I can still smell the hay, the warm milk, and the pungent smell of cow manure.  I can also hear the sound of the milk as it hit the pan.  In my mind's eye I still see the "nests" of kittens in the barn loft; the feed room with all its barrels, buckets, and mice; Boyah, Dolly, and Dottie Sue in their stalls, and you patiently feeding and milking.

You instilled in us the love of animals.  You patiently nursed orphaned rabbits, skunks, and flying squirrels.  Your steadfast care and gentle nature saved many little lives.  You helped take care of our numerous dogs and cats.  Each one was named and loved.  And when they died, they joined their family and friends in the pet cemetery.  You taught us that all life, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, was important.

I can remember the suppers you fixed -- fried potatoes and gravy; killed lettuce and onions and new potatoes; hot potato soup; or pinto beans, which Ricky Blackburn called "chocolate beans," and cornbread.  These meals were always accompanied by homemade butter and buttermilk, or sweet milk fresh from our cows. 

That brings up another memory - the times you let us churn.  You would fill a gallon jar full of milk and we'd rock and sing "Come butter, come," and shake the jar until the "butter came."  We'd feel so important that we had made butter!  And it sure did taste good.

Mama, I remember the potatoes you would slice thin and fry on top of the wood cook stove in the old house.  They'd be almost burned on the outside and almost raw on the inside, but when they were sprinkled with salt they tasted wonderful.  I remember how you used to make pickles for your potato salad.  Those homemade pickles gave the potato salad the best flavor.

I remember the quilts you used to put up on the quilting frame in the living room and I remember how patient you were with each of us as you'd show us how to quilt.  But I'm afraid our stitches weren’t small and even. Some of your friends would ask if you were going to remove the stitches and you'd tell them no. The stitches didn't matter - you were passing down a tradition to us.   And of course we liked to hide beneath the quilting frame - it made a wonderful tent!  

I remember Christmas at our house.  I remember the cedar tree that Daddy always cut.  It would scratch us as we hung the decorations on it, but boy, did it ever smell good!  I can still see the wreath with the bell that always hung on the front door and the chain of glass beads that went on the tree.  I can remember your shopping trips to Bower's Department Store on Christmas Eve.  You always waited until the toys were marked down so we could get a little extra.  I can remember the years when we didn't have that much and you'd wash our dolls and dress them in new clothes you had made and put them under the tree.  I can remember the year that Santa knocked the clock down from the mantle and we found his whiskers nearby.  I can also remember the year that I got a ballerina doll -- I was so excited!  And later on I remember the homemade aprons and store-bought socks we would take around to our aunts and uncles (remember Uncle Lee and the red socks?) and to other people.  Those were wonderful Christmases!

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.

MOUNTAIN TIME

Way Back in Weyahutta

Every yard blooms a fine Rose

of Sharon, mere shadow

of Delphia’s embroidery floss

stitching her way around

all the rough edges.

So began a poem years ago celebrating the "pretties" blooming in the yards of mountain women who lived in the section called Weyahutta, or "Worryhut", just off the Tuckasegee River. The woman mentioned in it, Delphia Potts, has become in my imagination a guiding spirit, one of those "prophetesses" that Emma Bell Miles writes about in her classic book, The Spirit of the Mountains. Her daughters Annie Lee and Willa Mae became two of my dearest friends, and they too are among my guiding spirits. Annie Lee's daughter Norma Bryson sat in my first freshman composition class at Western Carolina University. I will be writing more about this lineage later. All three women were excellent seamstresses; their needles did indeed stitch their way around many rough edges. This website will honor them and their indomitable "spirit of the mountains." Here is an excerpt from my poem "Mountain Time," in which Delphia sets us straight about the work we are called to do, no matter how difficult the circumstances, how crazy the world around us becomes.

From "Mountain Time"

All roads seem to lead

to Millennium, dark roads with drop-offs

we can't plumb. It's time to be brought up short

now with the tale-tellers' Listen: There once lived

a woman named Delphia

who walked through these hills teaching children

to read. She was known as a quilter

whose hand never wearied, a mother

who raised up two daughters to pass on

her words like a strong chain of stitches.

Imagine her sitting among us,

her quick thimble moving along these lines

as if to hear every word striking true

as the stab of her needle through calico.

While prophets discourse about endings,

don't you think she'd tell us the world as we know it

keeps calling us back to beginnings?

This labor to make our words matter

is what any good quilter teaches.

A stitch in time, let's say.

A blind stitch

that clings to the edges

of what's left, the ripped

scraps and remnants, whatever

won't stop taking shape even though the whole

crazy quilt's falling to pieces.

from BLACK SHAWL, LSU Press, 1998