I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

storytelling for truth lovers

  • Celebrating Nana: A Birthday Tale of Love and Rescue

    Celebrating Nana: A Birthday Tale of Love and Rescue


     

    Dear Ella and Molly,

    Once upon a time your Nana visited a faraway place called Greece, and she loved that place very much. One night she was going out to eat the yummy Greek food with your Naynay and their friends because eating the yummy Greek food was one of her most favorite things to do while she visited the faraway place.

    On their walk to get  the yummy Greek food, a little white dog appeared on the steps in front of your Nana.  The little white dog was very dirty with curly fur that had not been combed for a long, long time.

    Your Nana stopped to sit on a large stone next to the steps. And can you guess what she did next?

    Nana petted the little white dog for a long time, gave it one of her best smiles and then followed the little dog home to make sure it wasn’t lost. The little white dog ran up the stone steps all the way home, wagging its tail to thank Nana for being so kind.

    The End

    This story has a moral for you, Ella and Molly. Your Nana has always believed in rescuing both people and animals in distress. As you grow older, you will most definitely see her strength and determination to make your world a better place in action. You are very lucky little girls. Imagine the love your Nana will give you, her special granddaughters, if she made a place in her heart for a little white dog in a faraway place.

    Happy Belated Birthday, Nana – thank you for rescuing me twenty-five years ago – you’re simply the best, and we are all blessed.

    Naynay and Nana celebrate Ella’s kindergarten graduation with Molly, who was so proud of her big sister

     

     

     

     

  • Memorable Moments with Millie: A Friendship Story

    Memorable Moments with Millie: A Friendship Story


    me and Millie with her dog, Bear, in the 1970s

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    My piece today contains excerpts from a chapter in my second book, Not Quite the Same. which was published in 2009. I cut a large descriptive section of a golf outing in this chapter about our playing golf in the snow one Friday afternoon at a local club. Censorship of language was mandatory due to a large bottle of Crown Royal Millie and I shared that afternoon playing golf in the snow.

    Millie Miller is 80 this month, and I still believe I’m lucky to have had her as a friend for the past 50 years. We rarely see each other, but we have phone conversations to discuss our ailments, friends we’ve lost, and the money we would have if we hadn’t spent it all on those women we met in the bar.

    Millie Miller, still calling it like she sees it. Rock on, Millie.

  • Cherished Memories with the Huss Brothers: A Mother’s Day Tribute

    Cherished Memories with the Huss Brothers: A Mother’s Day Tribute


    Oscar, Dwight, and George in 2014

    Oscar (17), Dwight (15), and George (13) in 2026

    Every year my good friend Becky sends me a Mother’s Day card with pictures of her three sons who were a major part of my healing process when my mother passed in 2012. My Mother’s Day card this week shows handsome teenagers who still make me smile when I see them.

    Pretty and I bought a house in Montgomery, Texas, in 2010; and I lived there off and on from 2010 – 2014. Pretty’s job in South Carolina made her visits to Texas less frequent than we had hoped so I was grateful for the Fabulous Huss Brothers (and my other neighbors on Worsham Street) who entertained me when they ran past the two houses down Worsham Street from their house to ours for visits. They brought joy with them.

    The Fabulous Huss Brothers in our home on Worsham Street

    Now that I’m 80 years old I find myself brimming with advice for my readers in cyberspace: in a world dominated by useless noises from every direction, take time to talk to children before we teach them to filter their thoughts.

    Happy Mother’s Day to every mother on the planet – we all owe you.

    Onward.

    P.S. Top two photos and card design by Becky Huss.

  • From Windows to Wildlife: Artistic Birthday Gifts at 80

    From Windows to Wildlife: Artistic Birthday Gifts at 80


    Just when you think you’ve had all the fun you can have with a new decade of life, two creative friends who weren’t able to come to my surprise 80th. Birthday Party on March 20th. (celebrating my actual birthday on April 21, 1946), contacted me about bringing gifts by the house in the past week.

    My friend Saskia found this window on her street, placed there by a neighbor who put several on their street after replacing his old windows with new ones. She rescued two of the windows and decorated one for my birthday. These are her photos of “before” and “after” work on her Elmwood Park originals. She brought the finished project over today, and I swooned.

    Before…

    …After

    The card that accompanied this awesome gift read, in part: Dear Sheila Rae, To celebrate and remember a pretty epic birthday month, I made you something a bit funky (for a funky lady). It’s a bit fragile and it may not last very long, but hopefully it will bring some smiles for the time that it does. (this window is about the same age as you 🙂 Too true.

    I am still smiling over my new art created by my friend who thinks I’m a funky lady. That’s a huge compliment from this younger woman who immigrated to the USA from the Netherlands more than twenty years ago. Funky – I like it.

    I also loved another gift made by the artist Donna Magrath who brought it by the house last week . Donna has birds and squirrels that frequent her apartment balcony where she feeds and pampers them. She’s recently begun taking their pictures and making postcards from the images.

    the concern by the bird on the far right seemed sensible

    (I love to see the well-fed birds enjoying a chat)

    This gift was made by Donna for not only my birthday but also for Pretty’s birthday which is May 21st. so this was a clever way to bridge two dates with three birds. Donna’s work is always clever.

    From the Birthday Bash on March 20th. to a Feliz Cinco de Mayo and all the festivities in between, turning to face a new decade has been a special time because of the love shared by family and friends at home in South Carolina, across the USA from California to Pennsylvania and New York via Texas, and across the pond to dear friends in Europe.

    Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone. I’m happy, grateful, astonished by the generosity of your spirit and kindness to a funky old lady who grew up in a tiny town in Grimes County, Texas, in a different century.

  • Who’s Giving the Orders?

    Who’s Giving the Orders?


    With the exception of a few years in my seventies when arthritis limited my ability to git up and go on my own, I have always been committed to a morning walk. As a Taurus, I have also been committed to the same one-mile walking route day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, for the past nine years we’ve lived in this neighborhood. If you ask my wife, Pretty, my resistance to change is not always a virtue. Please don’t discuss it with her. I’m begging you.

    Last week a woman who looks to be about my age, a woman who lives in a house along my regular route was outside in her front yard putting an envelope in her mailbox. I had seen her a few times, and we always waved to each other but had never spoken. She stopped this particular day to have a word with me.

    “Hello,” she said. “I’ve seen you walk past our house every day for many years.”

    “Yes,” I said. “Your house is at the top of a hill that’s hard for me to pull so I usually stop here to catch my breath.”

    “I’ve always wanted to ask you if you’re following orders?” she asked.

    “Following orders? I’m not sure what you mean,” I replied.

    “I’m talking about doctors’ orders. Is there a doctor who’s making you walk every day?”

    “Oh, no one’s making me walk,” I said and smiled. “I just do it for myself.”

    She nodded, turned to walk back to her house, and said with a friendly wave, “I’m going to my sofa and watch tv, but you keep going.”

    I laughed, and kept going.

    Upon reflection I remember a doctor who did suggest walking would be good for me when I was thirty years old and had developed high blood pressure. That was several lifetimes ago – so long ago I can’t remember if that’s the original doctor’s orders which inspired my daily walks for the past fifty years or whether I connect my walks now with the memories of those long walks with my daddy at our hundred acres of pastures and piney woods just past the Grimes County/Montgomery County line in rural southeast Texas.

    My daddy loved a long walk, too. We had the best talks when we were together in that place. Sometimes I see him and hear him as I walk through the neighborhood I call home in South Carolina today. No orders necessary.