I took a late evening walk down Old Plantersville Road tonight just as the sun was setting. As you round the curve by the trailer park and walk past the wide open pastures on both sides of the road, the view of Texas sunsets is spectacular. Tonight’s colors of pinks and blues and reds were particularly beautiful and I picked a good spot about halfway to the railroad track to behold the awesome sight.
As I watched the light colors quickly deepen into darker hues, I was reminded of my mom’ s favorite sunset saying: “Well, you can’t paint a sunset. It changes too fast.” I couldn’t possibly count the times I heard her say that – and this was before her memory care days. I can only imagine that a teacher must have made that remark in the one art class my mother took in her entire life. I wonder if that teacher would be stunned to know what an indelible impression she made on one of her students. If Mom found a phrase she liked, she clung to it.
The next thought that came to me was we couldn’t walk off into them either. They change too fast.
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About Sheila Morris
Sheila Morris is a personal historian, essayist with humorist tendencies, lesbian activist, truth seeker and speaker in the tradition of other female Texas storytellers including her paternal grandmother.
In December, 2017, the University of South Carolina Press published her collection of first-person accounts of a few of the people primarily responsible for the development of LGBTQ organizations in South Carolina. Southern Perspectives on the Queer Movement: Committed to Home will resonate with everyone interested in LGBTQ history in the South during the tumultuous times from the AIDS pandemic to marriage equality.
She has published five nonfiction books including two memoirs, an essay compilation and two collections of her favorite blogs from I'll Call It Like I See It. Her first book, Deep in the Heart: A Memoir of Love and Longing received a Golden Crown Literary Society Award in 2008. Her writings have been included in various anthologies - most recently the 2017 Saints and Sinners Literary Magazine. Her latest book, Four Ticket Ride, was released in January, 2019.
She is a displaced Texan living in South Carolina with her wife Teresa Williams and their dogs Spike, Charly and Carl. She is also Naynay to her two granddaughters Ella and Molly James who light up her life for real. Born in rural Grimes County, Texas in 1946 her Texas roots still run wide and deep.
I'll Call It Like I See It 
I often find the best thing to do with sunsets is just let them be otherwise they overtake you, engulf you, and spit you out on the other side of dusk with visions of rainbows stuck in your brain. “Momma don’t let your babies grow up to be painters…” 😀
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What a vivid expression of the problem with painting sunsets – I love it and my mother would’ve certainly agreed! I am smiling at the don’t let your babies grow up to be painters!! 🙂 You and Poppy are the best!
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😀
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I like this. (Hint: “on either side of the road” is not the same as “on both sides of the road.” I know. One see this construction everywhere. Still…
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Thanks, Bob! My bad…will edit.
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It’s so true, too. Saturday night we had a red sunset. I’ve never seen that before. It seemed to be made of pink and purple and maybe gold and that made it look red. By the time I got my camera out there my husband said kind of ruefully, “too bad I didn’t call you out right away as it already changed.” But it was still an amazing sight.
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