I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Author: Sheila Morris

  • going home

    going home


    As the wheels of our jet plane touched down last Wednesday the 23rd. of February on our runway at the Houston Intercontinental Airport, Pretty shared the news that Texas governor Greg Abbott had sent a letter to the Department of Family and Protective Services, calling on licensed professionals and the general public to report the parents of transgender minors to state authorities if it appeared the minors were receiving gender affirming medical care which would now be considered child abuse. I tried to process that bombshell news as our plane screeched to a halt and taxied to our gate. No time really for deep thought as we disembarked and joined the hordes of passengers trying to find the baggage carousel while throngs of people pushed against us moving in the opposite direction to board flights bound for who knows where. We must have looked like ants that had lost their GPS – going back and forth, to and fro, hurry, hurry.

    Pretty blamed my break up with Texas on the weather. We left temperatures in the sunny 70s in South Carolina only to be met by a ferocious cold wind as soon as we stepped outside the Houston terminal. Jesus Cristus, we were freezing. Our motel for the first two nights of our visit was on Lake Conroe near Montgomery where Pretty and I had a home for four years, and the woman who checked me in that first night punished me for my comment on her not wearing a mask while advertising Covid safety protocols on their website. She put us in a room facing the lake, but it was only accessible by carrying our luggage through a wind tunnel with gusts of hurricane force. I recognized revenge when I felt it; I was chilled to the bone. Pretty was, too. I also recognized the look she gave me when we got to our room, the look that meant why can’t you leave things alone just once, Boomer?

    Texas was the place I’d been born in 1946, the place I had been educated by public schools through high school, the place I had graduated from college, the place where I had my first grown-up job at what was then a Big Eight accounting firm in downtown Houston, and finally the state I left a year later in 1968 to seek my fortune in a city that was as foreign to me as South Carolina was to South Dakota. For the next fifty plus years no matter where I roamed I always flew and/or drove home to Texas for Christmas and usually in the summer time to reconnect with family and friends; to celebrate the mystique of the spirit that defined native Texans as, well, native – to renew the bond I had with the land itself. When my mother became someone else who couldn’t remember how to play the piano and was in a memory care unit in Houston, I stayed for long periods of time in the state with Pretty’s encouragement to be with her.

    This visit, however, was our first trip back since 2017. That would be five years in case anyone is counting. New knees and Covid were the main culprits in my sabbatical from the state. Yet here we were for four nights and days that would be filled with visits to family and friends who had kept in touch over the years: meeting friends at a favorite Mexican restaurant the first night we were there, taking donuts to talk to three little boys who were small when we last saw them but now had grown up and were taking classes online; calling on a cousin who will be 98 this month and still going strong, another cousin who now at 81 is the primary caregiver for her husband she has always adored, two first cousins who met us for lunch and brought pictures from the past that sparked memories, memories.

    The weather was cold and gloomy every day we were there which gave the countryside a harshness I had never associated with the rolling hills that I claimed to be my country. The cattle now grazing needed hay from the ranchers to make it through the unsparing times. Pretty and I drove through my home town the second day of our visit on the way to the little cemetery where most of my family were buried. I felt sadness as I saw what was left of the town and home I loved. Nothing remained but the remnants of wooden houses in severe disrepair and falling down brick buildings. The town was no more.

    Russia invaded Ukraine the second day we were in Texas. When we were in our motel rooms at night, I watched the news on tv. Pretty followed the events on Twitter during the day and kept me up to speed. Regardless of the source, everyone agreed that the not unexpected invasion of a sovereign democracy had begun. Local news in Houston typically focused on murders in the city every day until the devastating international tragedy began and replaced the stories. I was not in a good place when I announced to Pretty and cousins at lunch the next day that this was my last trip to Texas until they brought my ashes in a nicely decorated urn to the little cemetery on one of the rolling hills of Grimes County.

    That was overly dramatic and untrue. Of course I will go back – hopefully not in an urn. The ACLU has filed suit against the state of Texas to protect the rights of transgender minors and their parents. Pretty managed to locate wonderfully warm coats and sweaters for us on Day Two, thank goodness. We ate our comfort Mexican food in a different place every day – even at the Houston airport when we had time for margaritas before the flight home. I loved being with friends and family, and I also loved going to watch the Gamecock women’s basketball team beat the Aggies on their home court in College Station. As a UT grad in rival territory, I was thrilled with the final score 89 – 48. We had an hour’s drive to get back to our motel room on Lake Conroe after the game, but when we walked through the wind tunnel to get to our room, I didn’t even notice the cold.

    the Fabulous Huss Brothers

    l. to r. Dwight (11), George (9) and Oscar (13)

    Thanks to Becky for the photo!

    *****************

    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated, boosted and please stay tuned.

  • celebrating Black History Month with Pearl Harris

    celebrating Black History Month with Pearl Harris


    In the tiny Sears Roebuck kit house I grew up in, boundaries were both invisible and highly visible. The home was owned by my maternal grandmother and shared with two of my mother’s adult brothers in addition to my daddy, mother and me. The home was crowded. When I think back on it, I don’t know how we all managed to eat and sleep there – not to mention the scheduling of everyone’s turn in the single bathroom which barely had space to turn around to close the door after entering. That room was tight, and boundaries were tightly defined.

    While the home itself was small, the lot on which it sat was large, a corner lot with an unattached garage (with an attached outhouse that may help explain the bathroom scheduling inside) behind the house. Beyond the garage a small pond which we called a tank in rural Texas lay quietly in an “in-town” pasture that had no fences. My back yard was spacious, vast in a small child’s mind, unique in comparison to the other small frame houses sitting on the few dirt roads that connected them.

    Although the tank wasn’t very big, the fish and frog population that lived there mysteriously thrived, encouraging our relatives from the bigger cities of Houston, Dallas, Rosenberg, et.al., to make regular fishing trips to our place “in the country.” They came with their poles, rods, reels, live and artificial bait to try to land Ol’ Biggie, the name my Uncle Toby gave to the wiser large perch and catfish that proved elusive most of the time. During those early years I preferred running around the banks of the tank with my cousins to dropping a line with a squiggly worm in the water.

    At random times, though, I made an exception to enjoy the company of a full-bodied black woman named Pearl who walked across another invisible line to come fishing in our tank. One paved road we called main street distinctly divided black and white people in my community in those days in the late 1940s and early 1950s;  that street should have been painted blood red. Pearl lived in an area of town on one side of the street I knew simply as The Quarters. I would be much older when I realized the name referenced slave quarters that still separated her world from mine.

    Pearl told me the best stories about all the fish she had caught in the hottest fishing holes around the county. I believed every word she said because I trusted the deep rich voice that spoke. Pearl and my grandmother were good friends who visited together whenever she got ready to leave with her bucket full of fish. Pearl had the best luck catching perch in our tank – never very large – but she bragged that the little ones were better to fry anyway. Made sense to me. My mother also adored Pearl which surprised me since Mama didn’t adore anyone including herself.

    Pearl Harris was the first black person in my life. She was warm, affectionate, funny and always kind to me. I have no idea how she came to be friends with my grandmother. I suspect they met in the general store in town where my grandmother clerked. Whatever the circumstance, I felt their friendship was authentic. They were easy with each other. I now know Pearl’s walk across the invisible racial divide to our fishing tank was not only brave but necessary to put food on the table for her family. My grandmother could relate to that need, too.

    Wanda Sykes says in her Netflix comedy routine that I’ve watched at least four times now, seriously, at least four, that all white people need to have at least one black person who is their friend. Wanda thinks that friendship just might be a starting point to heal the racial divide that is at the center of income inequality and a host of other problems in our country. From a little girl growing up in a Texas town big enough for only one general store but large enough to contain two worlds separated by skin colors of black and white, I say I couldn’t agree more, Wanda. Bravo.

    RIP Pearl Harris (1893 – 1957).

                                              ***************

    You may remember this post from last year. I will remember Pearl for a lifetime.

    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated, get boosted and please stay tuned.

  • yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will be afraid

    yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will be afraid


    We think of our lives in different ways from ourselves and others like we think of our families in different places but never being too far away from what we may think of as home.

    Everyone, on the other hand, acknowledges agreement on the cycle of life we believe in, and that circle we envision shows babies being born to parents who care for and protect their young until they are able to care for themselves, ready to leave to experience life on their own. In this life cycle we envision in our minds, parents will precede their children in death.

    Sometimes that picture of a life cycle is cruelly interrupted by a parent’s loss of a child while they, the parents, survive. These parents walk through the valley of the shadow of death as the psalmist wrote in the 23rd Psalm in the Bible and yet I find the Psalm is incomplete for I have witnessed tragic losses that broke the life cycle we expected. Some of those parents who remained were very afraid for their children and themselves. They feared the Evil of Death while they lost their faith in the future.

    Many years ago I wrote a poem about women who lose their children – some without warning, some after a short illness, some after an illness that lasted too long – but all out of our expected cycles of life.

    Rainy Day Women

    Their faces wear grief like blocks of stone.

    Their eyes see, and their ears hear,

    But they are in a separate place.

    The roads they walk are backwards,

    And their direction is aimless.

    They are the mothers who have lost children.

    They weep with no tears.

    They mourn without ashes,

    Their names are Sorrow and Emptiness.

    How can we reach their separate place?

    How can we touch the blind and deaf in their grief?

    Our words are all we can offer.

    Not for a minute, not for an hour, but for as long as they live.

    ***********

    This post is dedicated to Francie Kleckley in memory of her daughter Kathryn.

  • how do I love thee? let me count the ways

    how do I love thee? let me count the ways


    Last night Pretty and I were watching a new comedy on Netflix when she suddenly sat up and said, tomorrow is the 9th. of February, our 24th. anniversary. This was huge because for twenty-three years Pretty had problems remembering the date. Bravo!

    I usually began the reminder process in January every year with a conversation that followed along these lines. Pretty, you know we have an anniversary coming up in February. Oh yes, she would say. What day is it then? I asked. Time passed as the wheels turned. I could see them turning. Is it the 12th.? she finally guessed. No, I replied with outright disgust. It’s the 9th. Pretty said oh she knew it was either the 9th. or the 12th. but thought she always got it wrong so she went with the one she didn’t really think was right. Didn’t I say I saw the wheels turning? For twenty-three anniversaries, Pretty has never remembered the right date. I always remember because I have it written on my calendar, and I don’t consider that cheating. I consider it brilliant. (Was that a calendar I saw in Pretty’s lap last night? Hmm.)

    Return with me to those thrilling days of yesteryear to meet Pretty who magically changed from being a close friend and confidante (before the spontaneous trip to Cancun pictured above in February, 2001) to a woman who was hotter than the salsa we had with dinner at La Destileria the first night we were there. And trust me, that salsa was hot.

    Pretty was “out” in a conservative state in a tumultuous era. She was ahead of her time with her Bluestocking Bookstore in the Vista in Columbia before the Vista became cool. Her business closed after three years, but her contribution to the LGBTQ community was recognized and appreciated. She served on the original board of directors for the SC Gay and Lesbian Business Guild formed in 1993 and was the second president of that organization. Her passion for equality was the catalyst for an activist’s life, a passion she and I shared as friends over the decade that was the 1990s.

    At the turn of the century, change was in the air. It was like everyone suddenly realized time was passing faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive and if Superman and Wonder Woman were unlikely to intervene in the chaos and/or uninspiring sameness of our lives, we needed to make radical changes ourselves.

    Both Pretty and I were in long term lesbian relationships that experienced seismic shifts as the first year of the new century came to a close. Our partners began looking for love in other places. Pretty had the additional drama associated with making a home for a fifteen year old son who she adored, an athletically gifted teenager who was the quarterback of his high school football team and the starting pitcher for their baseball team. She mixed her real estate appointments in her new career as a realtor for The Hubbard Group with her tennis league schedules and her son’s games.

    The trip to Cancun was the launching pad for the most adventurous ride of my life. I had no way of knowing then that the gorgeous intelligent intellectually inquisitive woman with the wonderful sense of humor who grew up in New Prospect, South Carolina would marry the woman from deep in the heart of Richards, Texas and that we would be together for the next twenty-four years sharing a life unimaginable to me as a child. Yet, here we are – still laughing at each other’s jokes, still loving, still standing. And yes, still eating Mexican food as often as our older appetites allow; but now with the additional delight of sharing fajitas and quesadillas with our growing family that makes our love richer, more joyful, more playful.

    How do I love thee, Pretty? Let me count the ways, and let me begin with the spicy salsa you have always brought to our family life together for two decades plus now. On that first trip to Cancun, we walked along the beach in the moonlight and I said I would give anything to celebrate our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary together in 2026. Unbelievable. Inconceivable. That seemed like such a long, long time away then, especially since I was fifty-five years old and you were fourteen years younger. We’re almost there, but the years have passed faster than a speeding bullet, our love more powerful than a locomotive.

    Happy 24th. Anniversary, Pretty. Let the good times roll.

    ************************

    granddaughters Ella and Molly at Mexican restaurant

  • say her name: Breonna Taylor. now say his name: Amir Locke

    say her name: Breonna Taylor. now say his name: Amir Locke


    Before 7:00 a.m. last Wednesday, February 8th., 22 year old Amir Locke was sleeping soundly, wrapped in a comforter on a couch inside a Minneapolis apartment. A police bodycam video shows SWAT team police officers entering the apartment at that moment by quietly turning a key to unlock it, bursting through the doorway yelling Police! Search Warrant! One of the officers kicked the sofa where Locke was sleeping. Locke, a Black man, seemed to be startled and tried to sit up while holding a gun he had legally purchased for protection in his work as a driver for a food delivery service in the Minneapolis/St.Paul area. A few seconds later, Amir was shot and killed by policemen serving a no-knock warrant – but not for a warrant against Amir.

    Sound familiar? It really should. Next month, March 13th., marks the two year anniversary of the murder of Breonna Taylor, the 26 year old Black woman killed by police in her own apartment in Louisville, Kentucky. Ms. Taylor was an Emergency Room tech for the University of Louisville Health. Three police officers fired 32 bullets in the early morning raid that killed Taylor, hitting her six times.

    Jury selection has begun this week (two years after the fact) for Louisville Metro ex-police officer Brett Hankison on charges of wanton endangerment because he fired recklessly during the early morning raid into Taylor’s neighbor’s apartment where three people were inside. He also fired 10 shots into Taylor’s apartment, but his bullets were not the ones later identified as killing her.

    No one has ever been charged in Breonna Taylor’s death.

    Marisa Lati in an article in The Washington Post on February 03, 2022 writes “Ben Crump, an attorney for Taylor’s family, said the three felony counts of wanton endangerment against Hankison should be the lowest charges among many in the case. ‘The trial of Brett Hankison recalls the inconceivable lack of justice for Breonna Taylor,’ he said in a statement. ‘It is hard to comprehend that this is the only criminal trial to emerge from the botched no-knock raid that took her innocent life and subsequently shook the nation.’ ”

    Reporting by Sara Burnett of the Associated Press on February 05th. states Amir Locke had recently filed paperwork to start his own music business and was leaving Minneapolis to move to Dallas next week to be closer to his mother. Locke’s family said he had no previous criminal record. Amir was born in the St. Paul suburb of Maplewood, grew up in the suburbs where he played basketball in middle school and tried out for the high school football team but a broken collar bone ended his athletic career. Music became his passion, he loved hip-hop and “speaking about the realities of what’s going on in the neighborhood,” according to Andre Locke, his father.

    February is designated Black History Month, and the clouds that cover me today are for these two young people who should have been contributors to that history but whose names now become reminders of the ongoing lack of equal justice and systemic racism instead. Amir Locke. Breonna Taylor.

    Hear their voices as Oprah explained the remarkable cover of Breonna Taylor for the September, 2020 issue of Oprah Magazine:

     “For the first time in 20 years, @oprah has given up her O Magazine cover to honor Breonna Taylor. She says, Breonna Taylor. She was just like you. And like everyone who dies unexpectedly, she had plans. Plans for a future filled with responsibility and work and friends and laughter. Imagine if three unidentified men burst into your home while you were sleeping. And your partner fired a gun to protect you. And then mayhem. What I know for sure: We can’t be silent. We have to use whatever megaphone we have to cry for justice. And that is why Breonna Taylor is on the cover of O magazine. I cry for justice in her name…”

    Today on this 08th. day of Black History Month I also cry for justice in Breonna Taylor’s and Amir Locke’s names, two young people who made history for the wrong reasons but whose legacy will forever be linked to the struggles for justice for all Black people everywhere. Say their names.

    **********************

    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated, get boosted and please stay tuned.

    Stay safe, stay sane and stay tuned.