GREENBRIER
written in 2000

In honor of my mother on the 1st day of June. She continues the tradition, because she made a promise.


Our purpose on that blustery day in May---to refresh the flowers on my grandmother and grandfather’s graves at the Greenbrier Cemetery, before the all-crucial-date….the first Sunday in June, better known as “Decoration Day”. For those of us in the south, “Decoration Day” is the day for acknowledging our ancestors and those who have gone on, by paying special homage to their grave sites, with the addition of fresh, or in this case, silk flowers. My prim and proper grandmother, would have been mortified if her gravesite wasn’t at least as pretty as Aunt Gladys’.

My mother, my 8 year old daughter and I set forth on our adventure, a 2 hour drive that would take us on the back-roads of Williamson County, Tennessee, under canopied, tree-lined lanes and down the road of childhood memories. Names of roads like, Bending Chestnut, Lick Creek and Pinewood Road blazed like green beacons along our way. Greenbrier is one of those tiny little communities in the heart of Tennessee, that has almost died out. All that's left -- a church and a cemetery.

Of course, this was not my first trip to Greenbrier. I had been for the
occasions of the burials of my grandparents. But as I walked around the tombstones, softened by generations of wind and rain, I recalled the day 20 years ago, when I came here with my mother, my grandmother and two great aunts with the task of locating crucial dates for my high school history project – “My Ancestry.” Of course, those were the days before computerization of records and easy accessible genealogies on the internet. I could hear voices from the past … Aunt Ila, and Aunt Gladys, instructed me on the fine art of charcoal rubbings. The engravings even then had nearly been obliterated by lichens and the cool Tennessee winds. Odd names like Oggie, Missouri Enora, Wiley and Berry peered out from the rubbings. Family…although hundreds of years old…they were mine.

Today, we women of the next three generations, put the final touches on the new flower arrangements and decided to continue our exploration of Greenbrier. We traveled down a hill and around the curve, to "the old home-place." Surprisingly enough, the house was much the same as my mother remembered it from her childhood--- several rock chimneys, graying wood siding and porches galore on the two-story farmhouse. My mother never lived here, but this was the place her fond memories of childhood began…Weekends with her Grandma, romping with her cousins, riding the old sway-backed horse, and of course swinging on the sideporch swing. Nearby…Lick Creek-- the creek my mother played in and her father before her. It was a pretty little creek with a limestone base, which made the creek run crisp and clear.

As the three of us continued our wanderings, the smell of a light rain and
fresh cut hay wafted through our car. The gravel lane meandered beside the creek. My daughter squealed with glee when she discovered that in order to cross Lick Creek, we must drive our car down into the creek and back up again. (We city-folk rarely have the opportunity for such marvelous adventures.) We made four crossings in this manner before our trip was completed.

As we finally made our way homeward I thought to myself… This is our family history along these roads and buried in this earth. The people who once inhabited these hollows and ridges, I am sure, had their own traditions which are now long forgotten. For every year that passes, a family's history changes as well as their traditions. However, it occurred to me that we women of this family now have a new tradition which we will long cherish; the annual trek to Greenbrier before the first Sunday in June.