I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: family life

  • our community lost a fighter who was also a good friend


    Profile photo of Nigel Mahaffey

    Nigel M Mahaffey, Jr.

    (August 07, 1959 – June 25, 2020)

    (photo from Linked In)

    The obituary for this friend began “Nigel loved life and was one of the most joyful people to grace this earth.” I couldn’t agree more. He always greeted me with a smile that wasn’t forced, a hug to match the smile. Joyful – that’s a compliment these days when not many people are full of joy. Nigel was a true believer in sharing joy regardless of the circumstances.

    Tige and Nigel. Nigel and Tige. I never really thought about them separately because Pretty and I rarely saw one without the other for the past twenty-seven years they were together. Tige and Nigel worked together in their political consulting business, lived in the same neighborhood for most of their married life, and more importantly to us they both loved to play trivial pursuit on regular game nights at their house or someone else’s. If Nigel were here writing this, he would add that Tige, Pretty and another friend named Curtis were always favorite picks for any trivial pursuit team while Nigel joined the race for the last ones chosen that featured me and Curtis’s husband, Dick. Such fun times.

    Nigel and Tige made many contributions to the lgbtq community over the past 30 years, not the least of which was their magazine In  Unison which was a professionally produced news magazine intended for the lgbtq community in the southeast. During the early days of organizing our  queer movement in the southern states, In Unison was a powerful voice for a community struggling to discover that voice. The articles in the magazine, the advertising supporters, the distributors – everyone wanted to encourage the co-founders  to continue their positive messaging on behalf of the queer community in South Carolina and the surrounding area.

    Pretty and I ran into Nigel and Tige earlier this year at The Kingsman restaurant. Truth be told there were so many gay customers in the restaurant that night I thought I must have missed the invite to a family party. But Tige and Nigel got up from their dinners, gave us both a big hug and we all promised each other we would definitely get together for a game night in 2020.

    Opportunity lost forever – Nigel, you would have been my first pick if I were ever made team captain.

    I know many of your friends who will join me in grieving your loss, my friend. Rest in peace, Nigel M Mahaffey, Jr.

    Stay safe, stay sane, and stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • i heard dave chappelle say shut up, white women. was he talking to me?


    In Dave Chappelle’s concert “8:46” he opens by thanking young protesters in the streets today –  carry on, young ones, he says.  You’re good drivers, I’m comfortable riding in the back seat.

    I so got that comment. When I watch the protesters in the streets of our major (and minor) cities and towns, I feel exactly the same way. Go on, young people, keep marching. I am comfortable in the back seat with your driving the wheels of change toward a time when equality and justice for all are reality – not just words on handmade signs. Keep at it, young ones, until you reach deep into the heart of every person full of hate, pluck the racism from the blood that flows through it and close the wound in a river of true righteousness.

    By the way, make sure you vote in November. We need you to march all the way to the voting booths.

    White women, I support you, but shut the f— up. Whoa – what’s that you say, Dave? Ouch. Now that was a little too close for comfort. I was all about you until we got to that comment. Thank goodness for Dr. Laura – since she was one of the prominent white women Dave was talking to and about, right? At first, I was startled by the comment. Then I remembered no one was safe from Dave Chappelle’s surgical cuts. I went from a sharp intake of white privilege breath to a moment of quiet realization that he meant me, too. Thank you for the support, Dave – truly. I know you are sincere.

    I also know for sure I do not know the pain of those marching in the streets to claim their identities. I do not know the pain of black women who have lost their sons to police violence, black women who fear for the lives of their children every time one of them  leaves the house. I do not know the pain of siblings who have lost siblings at the hands of those sworn to serve and protect them. I do not pretend to know this kind of pain.

    But white privilege? Me? Yes girl, you, said Pretty who tries her best to make me a better person. But remember, Pretty, I’m a white l-e-s-b-i-a-n. Don’t I get a little extra credit for having that double dip scoop on the ice cream of discrimination? Doesn’t count in this cone, Pretty says with finality. Of course she’s right. Sigh.

    For more than seven decades I never owned the term white privilege because I came from a poor family growing up in the back piney woods of southeast Texas.  I saved my college money from running six cows with my daddy and grandfather when I was a child. My allowance from my daddy in college was $25 a month. Sometimes he was apologetically late. My first jobs after college were in a rich man’s world of systemic oppression of women financially and every day in the workplace. I didn’t think being white gave me good fortune.

    And yet, it did. The older I get, the more I am aware of the racial divide I started out with in my little segregated red brick schoolhouse in 1952 that happened to be on one side of a single street in a dusty southeast Texas town of 500 people where the other side of that main street held a white wooden schoolhouse full of children whose grandparents and great-grandparents were slaves.

    Time for me to shut up.

    Stay safe, stay sane and stay tuned.

  • where am I now that I need me? why Peachtree Rock, of course!


    As monuments fall to the ground around us, I was reminded of my love for Peachtree Rock which bit the dust in December of 2013 due to erosion, storms and visitors’ carvings after millions of years of natural life. Named for no one – just a wonderful surprise for amateur hikers and their four-legged friends. (A shout out to my friend Ellen from Great Britain who asked me about the demise.)


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    I think I see me at the Peachtree Rock Preserve

    We each have our own places that remind us of who we are – or who we would like to be.  Water does it for some people.  Lakes.  Rivers. Oceans.  We are drawn to waters like these for their uninterrupted flows and timelessness.  We can paddle our own canoes on a river or we can swim in an ocean or we can float behind boats in a lake.  Yes, the water reminds us of ourselves and gives us a sense of peace.

    Since I am a Taurus and have a general water phobia, I wouldn’t head to the beach to look for myself if I were lost.  No, I’d go for a walk – not actually a hike these days – but a nice walk.  If I were in Texas, I’d look for me in an old Dodge Dakota pickup truck.  I’d be going for a ride in Grimes County to see the rolling hills and pastures filled with cows and horses, the bluebonnets in the spring or the splashes of bright red and yellow leaves on the hardwood trees in the fall. I’d enjoy the absence of traffic on the back country roads.  Usually I’d stop for my walk at the Fairview Cemetery to say hello to my family and friends who rest there now, but the recent losses make this stop too painful so I doubt that’s where I’d find myself today.

    No, I think I’d go to South Carolina to the Peachtree Rock Preserve.  I’d park in the little area reserved for visitors to start my walk that is a mile on a narrow trail into the thick forest where lo and behold, I’d come to a clearing about halfway up the trail to find the Peachtree Rock rising majestically in the woods, resting on its perch as it has sat for millions of years.  The rock is as timeless for me as the ocean;  my sense of awe when I first saw it was as deep as the sea is for those who worship its eternal waves.  I’ve only been there once, but the feelings of strength, serenity and sheer joy I felt when I was there make it the perfect place to look for me any day when I seem to have gone missing.

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    It was okay for me to bring a friend – 

    this is Smokey Lonesome Ollie – he also loved climbing

    Stay safe, stay sane and stay tuned.

  • summertime and the living is, uh, not quite so easy as we’d thought originally


    I asked Pretty to join me on our screened porch last night a little after 9 o’clock. Pretty who had had a stressful day putting out fires she didn’t start, didn’t hesitate. Ok, she said as she began to move outside with me. That’s one of Pretty’s best characteristics – she’s never afraid to switch gears – she’s always willing to humor me when I make a gear switch.  I guess that’s really two exceptional qualities, but who’s counting.

    Today is the summer solstice, I reminded Pretty, it’s the longest daylight of the year. I wanted to enjoy it with you, I said. Look, it’s almost 9:15 and just now getting darker.

    Pretty exclaimed with enthusiasm – oh you’re right. I’m so glad you suggested the porch.

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    You can blame this on the frogs

    While Pretty and I talked on our porch last night, I tried to explain to her what was going through my head on this first day of my 74th. summer. The sounds from our porch were connected to the sounds of my earliest memories of summer when I slept in a small double bed with my maternal grandmother while a cheap oscillating fan turned slowly from side to side as it valiantly tried to cool us in the hot humidity of an East Texas heat a thousand miles away from South Carolina, a heat that would not be relieved by opening every window on the porch where we slept or the random whisper of cool air from a small oscillating fan made by Westinghouse. The sheets were always clean but never actually cool.

    I never trusted the sheets anyway after discovering a scorpion hiding between them one night.

    But it was the sound of the frogs around our pool here on Cardinal Drive – particularly after a rain – that drew me to those hot muggy nights of Grimes County, Texas where I was raised. My grandmother’s wooden house made from a retail catalog blueprint had many design flaws, but its one awesome feature which had nothing to do with the design really, was the magical pond (or tank, as we called it in East Texas) behind her house.

    The tank was the focal point of my only-child imagination play stories during the day, but it was the tank’s music of those summer nights I hope will never be erased from my memory. Specifically, it was the frogs, or bull frogs as my grandmother used to call them  just before we drifted off to sleep. The low guttural sounds were always behind the house and were somewhat subdued until every light was turned off at night. But then, those frogs got louder and louder until they hit a mighty crescendo. My grandmother and I laughed out loud when we heard them.

    The frogs who live in our backyard on Cardinal Drive are rarely as raucous as the bull frogs in my tank in Richards – I think they are smaller frogs. But occasionally I hear one of those loud guttural sounds looking for something, probably safer water supplies, and I am transported to different days. To a grandmother who guided me with her wisdom – now to a woman who loves sharing another summer solstice with me.

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    I was blessed with a loving eccentric family who in the end gave me what they could – so much more than I realized. Today I stand with the Poor People’s Campaign and their national Call for a real Moral Revival to discover a soul within ourselves that will move all people to address the intersection of poverty, systemic racism, social injustices.

    One of the co-founders of the movement, Reverend William J. Barber II says, “In the long arc of human history, there are moments when the universe itself groans and declares, ‘It’s time.’”

    It is, indeed, time. It’s also summertime and contrary to the Gershwin hit song from Porgy and Bess, the living is definitely not easy for most of our fellow citizens who continue to demonstrate in our streets or elsewhere. Keep the faith. We must do better.

    Onward.

    Stay safe, stay sane and please stay tuned.

     

  • have you heard the one about…


    the little old lady who walked into the West Columbia Location of the South Carolina Diagnostic Imaging clinic late yesterday afternoon to have two MRIs performed?

    (Masks were provided, social distancing observed by all patients and personnel in the facility – thankfully.)

    The little old lady asked if she could take a pain pill before they started. Much younger technician Tammy replied of course and provided her with water while at the same time also offering  her two bright yellow ear plugs. It gets a little loud in there, Tammy said. Would you like headphones with music, too?

    Oh yes, said the little old lady. Definitely. Can you have them play ABBA music?

    How do you spell ABBA, asked Tammy.

    Then we got down to business on my right bionic knee when Tammy rolled me into the MRI tube as the machine began making noises like roofers who are hammering nails in the final sections of replacing a roof. Bam, Bam, wham, bam…louder in staccato…and then in loud warning signals reminiscent of sirens in WWII announcing the bombs are coming, the bombs are coming. But did I care?

    Not really because the pain pill apparently kept Abba always singing in the back of those headphones:  lots of my favorites like Take a Chance on Me, Super Trooper, Dancing Queen, Fernando and finally when I thought I would go mad from the hammering noises, Mama Mia (the fav of my grandbaby) sang me out of the first procedure. I pictured the little 8 month old baby loving to bounce up and down in her playpen to Mama Mia. And then I was rolled back out of the tube – thinking ABBA might not have been the best choice for remaining totally motionless during the procedure. I had been tempted to groove just a little, but NO WAY.

    After a quick bathroom break, I was back on the table being slid down once again into the tube with its deafening blows to take pictures of my lower lumbar. Tammy remained most professional as she adjusted the headphones for my music. This disc jockey wasn’t a hard core ABBA fan so s/he threw in other fan favorites from the era like Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline, the House of the Rising Sun by James Taylor, Carole King I Feel the Earth Move which I did, by the way, when Tammy slid me out of the tiny tube which I felt getting tinier the second go round. For some reason the lumbar didn’t seem to take as long.

    Maybe it’s because time had stood still during the 1 and one half hour procedure. Tammy helped me slowly sit up.

    While I gathered myself to stand, Technician Tammy said, “I’ve burned you a CD – it should be ready about now.”

    To which I replied, “Oh, you burned me a CD? Thank you so very much – that’s really sweet. I hadn’t heard some of those songs in years.”

    To which Tammy said in a somewhat subdued tone, “The CD is for your doctor. It’s your images.”

    To which I replied, “Oh, well of course.”

    Pretty was waiting for me in the car, and when I told her about the CD, she laughed uproariously as only she can do when something is really funny – we both laughed all the way across town to pick up her Wednesday night pasta at her favorite Mediterranen Tea Room. We were still laughing last night when I passed out at 9 o’clock from exhaustion.

    Stay safe, stay sane and please stay tuned.