a pre-thanksgiving meltdown

Posted bySheila Morris 14 Comments on a pre-thanksgiving meltdown

Pretty and I have so much to be thankful for this year I plan to do a Very Thankful Thanksgiving post in the next few days – complete with pictures of our six weeks old baby granddaughter. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday between Halloween and New Year’s Day because the traditions of family times and places on that holiday  linger in my memories alongside my hopes for the promises of a new year.

However, I also have much for which I am not thankful as the year comes to a close. I live in a polarized country that now has the weight of an impeachment process in the Congress, the  “almost third” such process (I saw Nixon resign and walk away with his now famous V sign in 1974) in my lifetime. Nixon. Clinton. And now Trump. The public hearings that began this week gave the American people a better understanding of a president who apparently serves at and for his own pleasure. This is not a pretty picture, and as Wanda Sykes likes to say when she makes fun of white people and our free-floating guilt, it makes me sad.

As if the impeachment process weren’t enough to make me less thankful, I find the more compelling news articles in 2019 weren’t articles of impeachment but those regarding the creation of detention centers along the southern borders of my home state ofTexas and other states to accommodate the thousands of Latino refugees seeking asylum from persecution in their own countries.

An image forever etched in my brain is of Salvadoran Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his 23-month-old daughter Valeria who drowned trying to cross the Rio Grande River from Mexico to safety in the United States in June of 2019. Their story is only one of many who made the treacherous journey to the US only to find – not freedom – but incarceration in a detention system run by for-profit companies that are often more interested in what they are paid than the people in their care.

According to The Guardian.com the number of persons living in detention centers throughout the United States totals 52,722 as of September 10, 2019. Unbelievable.

On our way home from babysitting our grandbaby tonight, Pretty asked me to please stop being so negative about the football coach, the football team, the rainy weather, the cold weather, politics, the president and whatever else we were talking about. Evidently I had a pre-Thanksgiving meltdown right there in the car. She told me my passionate outpourings made her more worried and raised her anxiety level. When I asked her whether she didn’t share my thoughts, she said she did indeed about almost everything I’d brought up but she preferred keeping her opinions to herself and offered a suggestion to me that I do the same. I told her I felt less anxious if I spoke up and shared my worries with her.

Hm. Maybe I should limit my negative opinions to my blogs. Now there’s an idea Pretty will support.

Stay tuned for my Very Thankful Thanksgiving post.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Published by 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. Her writings have been included in various anthologies including Out Loud: the best of Rainbow Radio, Saints and Sinners New Fiction from the 2017 Festival, Mothers and Other Creatures; Cowboys, Cops, Killers, and Ghosts (Texas Folklore Society LXIX). 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.

14 replies on “a pre-thanksgiving meltdown”

  2. Mmm, you’re in an unenviable position. You need to talk about it but Pretty can’t take any more. Hope you resolve it. You never know, there may be some good political news? From where we’re sitting, it’s all awful too 😦

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  4. I constantly have to monitor my media consumption because the news IS depressing whether in your country or mine or looking at events in other places, like Hong Kong. It puzzles me why more people aren’t in the streets as they are in HK fighting for their rights and supporting democracy. Have we become complacent? Tired? Bored? Disillusioned? But I am thankful for the blogosphere and this little corner of kindness under your banner.

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    1. Hi Susanne. Now that I have two new bionic knees I have to ask myself why I am not in the streets every day supporting democracy. I don’t feel complacent or bored, but I do feel tired and disillusioned. I tell myself that my blog is my “boots on the ground” in the fight for basic human rights and democracy, but am I also a wimp?
      I don’t know – maybe at 73 I cut myself an undeserved break. I should be at those camps with a huge sign demanding their release every day. Wrong is still wrong at any age.

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  5. Sometimes it’s hard not to be negative when living in such negative times–that image of that father and daughter in the river still makes me weep–but I try to tell myself that life, and politics, is a pendulum, and while it has moved away from my side,a more positive and hopeful side, it will come back.

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  6. Such an insightful post. We are living in very troubling times and the anxiety is contagious. I cling to a faith in our higher natures, that human evolution is true, and that wisdom will prevail. I also know there are no guarantees

    Sent from my iPad

    >

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    1. Dearest Robyn, I hope your faith in our higher natures and wisdom will prevail, too. I’m just hoping right now for a little more than 50% chance of that happening. I miss you. my friend of many moons.

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  7. Basically, we have newly born concentration camps growing here. I wonder what category of people will be put in them next? And just like in Germany, back in the day, it’s basically okay, I guess. The democrats are utterly failing in their counteroffensive. So, um, yeah, share your disgust here. I’ll share it with you. And I still can’t believe this is actually is happening to our beautiful country. What if this mistake of a president gets re-elected? What will we do then? Be good Germans? And bigger question, why are so many people in our country filled with hate, racism and violence. Why do we read about the next mass shooter like the weather reports?
    I understand why Pretty doesn’t want to talk about it. What can we do? Just like the Germans, not a lot. When your country is being run by fascists, you grow flowers or such.
    These people are so seriously dumb. Why are they here?

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    1. You know, Cindy, I actually think about that a lot…about our being good Germans. Teresa and I were in Dachau many years ago. It was such a surreal experience to see the pink triangles along with the other identifying marks of the doomed there. Where were the “real” German people during the Nazi regime, we asked ourselves. Too often I feel now that I am one of them because I don’t do more. Thank goodness for the ACLU, RAICES, and all the other groups on the front lines for the rest of us. The best I have to offer is financial support for them, but feel guilty for not doing more. Thank you for your thoughtful comments, my friend. Onward.

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