Miss Pearl didn't require a day off for giving thanks
This column by the late Atlanta writer Celestine Sibley was originally published on Nov. 15, 1992.
Busy as I was sitting in the backyard swing shelling pecans for holiday pies, I had to know why this gentle, pretty woman, who safeguarded her complexion by wearing a broad-brimmed hat and carrying a parasol, took such a hard-nosed attitude about a holiday our family rejoiced in.
"While I've got a mind of my own, I am obligated to use it, " she said. "I don't happen to need a presidential proclamation to tell me to be thankful. I am thankful, every day of my life."
I made room for her on the swing and handed her some shelled pecans to munch on.
"What's the matter with a national holiday?" I asked.
"Nothing, " she said. "If you need it. To me being thankful is a matter of habit, not going by a calendar. Every morning when I open my eyes on a new day I start being thankful - for being alive, for having a roof over my head, for having a job I like. It goes on from there - food to eat, shoes for my feet, I get to the depot and I see the freight come in and go out. Back in the summer, I said a prayer of thanksgiving for the big watermelon crop my neighbors had. Did you see the watermelons we shipped? Weren't they beautiful?"
To my shame, I had probably seen the watermelons and had only fleetingly admired them without a thought of thanksgiving for the farmers who grew them.
But I have thought often of Miss Pearl's little mini-sermon. There's a line in an old book I read daily that goes: "Every lot is happy to the person who bears it with tranquillity."
Miss Pearl's life may have seemed one of monotony and drudgery to someone else. To her, it was useful and exciting.
"When I hear that train whistle, I can't help it, my heart turns over in happiness, " she said. Train whistles affect a lot of us that way, and we don't have Miss Pearl's affinity for them. She and that little telegraph machine had a lot to do with their coming and going.
Miss Pearl was a widow, and I heard recently that she had become old and infirm and moved to a nursing home, where she died. Her old house has been sold and moved to another lot. The little depot up beside the railroad tracks was demolished years ago. Two trains a day still pass, and in the night you hear their sweet nostalgic call.
Because she was a friend of my mother's, who visited her every day when she was in her last illness, I valued her. But I think I value her memory most because she made me at least try to acquire what she called "the thankful habit." For her, a schoolchild who waved as he passed the depot on his way across the tracks was cause for thanksgiving. She stopped to speak to dogs in what was then the dirt road between her house and the station. She admired the flowers in a neighbor's yard. No changing leaf, no cloud escaped Miss Pearl's attention - and failed to inspire her gratitude. Hers may have been the best preparation of all for Thanksgiving Day.
