A Tribute to Pearl Miller Berry
This is a story that belongs to someone else.
I come from a family who used any holiday as a chance to congregate and eat. Because I was born on Father's Day, my daddy and I frequently combined our days into one big family dinner. And always, my beloved Aunt Pearl would tell the story of the day I was born. With no children of her own, she believed she held a half-interest in me, which she did, and I always felt she was my other mother. The story is so familiar I can repeat it by heart, so this is my gift to her memory.
" I remember the day you were born! What a long night it was before you appeared at 10:30 on June 21, the longest day of the year, as well as falling on Father's Day.
It began with a Saturday night fish fry at mine and your Uncle Glenn's house. Aunt Rena and Uncle Raymond, Ruth and Owen, Gran and Uncle Reuben and your mama and daddy were all there. About 10:00 the party broke up and everyone went home except Ruth and Owen. Owen loved to talk! When your Mama got home she began having bad backaches, so they turned around with Gran in tow, and came back to our house to use our phone, as Sally and Homer did not yet have one. They called Dr. Caldwell who delivered you and he suggested that they return with Gran to her home in Huntsville for the rest of the night, to be nearer Huntsville Hospital. I, of course, went along too.
After a sleepless night at Gran's old house on Holmes Street, we checked in at 6:30 at Huntsville Hospital. The temperature that day topped out at 104 degrees, and only surgery and delivery rooms were air-conditioned at the hospital in those days. You arrived at 10:30 with the help of forceps since your mama had a spinal block.
The doctor immediately allowed your dad, me and your Gran Miller in to see you. Oh! I had never seen such a beautiful baby! I thought babies were red and wrinkled, but not you. You were a pink and white doll and even on that day we could see you favored your daddy. You came into this world with eyes wide open, scanning everything around you.
By mid-afternoon, your Granny Morris arrived, driven by Uncle Dave and Aunt Margaret who had come down from Rossville to take her. I left, exhausted, when they arrived and took the Trailways home to Scottsboro. The bus was cool and I slept all the way to Five Points, where I got off at Larkin Street and walked the three blocks home. Your uncles, Reuben and Glenn, were asleep in the front yard in lawn chairs when I walked up.
Your daddy went down before and after work for the next couple of days until they brought you home, with Gran holding you on a pillow in the back seat. She stayed for a week to help your mama out. When you got home, the entire family was assembled at your house waiting for them to arrive. It was one of the best times in our family's lives."
In 1997 on the first of July, Aunt Pearl had a massive cerebral hemorrhage, which left her in the nursing home for more than seven years. The next year on my birthday, I went to her room at Cloverdale and told her it was my birthday. She smiled and nodded that she remembered. I said to her, "It wouldn't be my birthday without your story. Since you can't tell it to me, I will tell it to you." And so I began.
"I remember the day you were born....."
God bless women who are mothers at heart. They make the world a better place.
