I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Humor

  • Gamecock women went to Duke – and so did we

    Gamecock women went to Duke – and so did we


    thanks to Gamecock Jennifer for great seats behind our bench at Duke game

    Duke took early lead, but Gamecock women finished with 77-61 win

    Pretty and I have made the 3 1/2 hour road trip from Columbia, South Carolina to Durham, North Carolina three times in the past eight years to watch our Gamecock women’s basketball team play the Duke University Blue Devils. The trip this year was unique with a new traveler on board: 23 month old granddaughter Molly. While older sister Ella performed in The Nutcracker ballet in Columbia this weekend, Molly had a number of firsts with us starting with our first road trip together.

    Molly’s mom Caroline always has her hair and clothes fixed so cute

    another first for Molly was staying in a motel room with her Nana and Naynay

    (she found Naynay’s Crocs next to bed and took off like a herd of turtles)

    Pretty and Molly outside Cameron Indoor Stadium at Duke University on Game Day, Molly’s first basketball game

    Molly happiest when looking at pictures of Ella

    Our personal record with the Gamecock women is now 2-1 at Duke (yes, we were there for the loss in 2016), but while the first two games we saw at Cameron were exciting, this third game in Durham was a winner not only because we won a basketball game but also because we shared a memory maker experience with two North Carolina friends who are ardent Gamecock fans as well as our first attempt to indoctrinate a new little Gamecock fan who now shouts “Cocks” whenever the people around her shout “Game.” Sigh. If only we could have had a different mascot.

    Gamecock women’s basketball won at Duke – and so did we. Go Cocks!

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    Slava Ukraini. For all children everywhere.

  • a man of letters – season 2 – episode 2

    a man of letters – season 2 – episode 2


    My dad’s mother, Betha Day Robinson Morris, was born October 23, 1903. In October of 1964 my thirty-nine-year-old father wrote a birthday letter to his mother who lived in Richards, Texas (eighty miles north of where he lived in Richmond, Texas). I call this one of my daddy’s deep in the heart moments – I can picture my grandmother’s tears when she read this from her youngest of three grown children. She was the one who treasured the words he wrote; I found this letter after her death in 1983.

    My personal favorite line in this letter is “You know when you have people who believe in you, you hate to let them down.”

    Daddy and Mama were thrilled about getting their first home together in 1964. They had eloped in 1945 when he returned from England at the end of WWII; I was born in 1946 ten months later. We lived in Richards with my maternal grandmother in her home that was less than a minute walk from my dad’s parents until I was thirteen years old. When my parents and I moved away from Richards, we lived in rental houses in Brazoria, Texas for five years. They moved to another rental house in Richmond when I left for college; Daddy and Mama got jobs in the school district there.

    The American dream was alive and well in the fall of 1964.

    Daddy and my grandmother at the back steps of her home circa 1943

    Does anyone have a favorite line in the letter?

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    Slava Ukraini. For the children.

  • a man of letters – season 2 – episode 1

    a man of letters – season 2 – episode 1


    My father’s letters continued after his marriage to my mother, and later he wrote to me when I was in college in the 1960s. I look forward to another series on those entertaining letters, but for now I will leave my family as they were at the end of World War II. (July 01, 2018 – season 1 – episode 11)

    In June, 2018 I published a series of letters in this blog that my father wrote to my mother who was the hometown girl he left behind as well as letters to other family members during WWII. I did plan to do another series that summer five years ago on letters he wrote to me when I was in college at the University of Texas in Austin from 1964 – 1967 but found I suffered from burnout, emotional exhaustion, or the devil made me give up. My dad was my best friend from the time I was born in 1946 until his death from colon cancer in 1976 at fifty-one years of age. He had beautiful handwriting I didn’t inherit and a beautiful mind, too. Here’s a sample of both.

    My daddy always loved poetry and music so when he gave me these words at Christmas my senior year in high school, I wasn’t surprised. I don’t remember if he mentioned they were part of the lyrics from a song called A Letter from Santa written by Mickey Maguire (more remembered for Christmas classic I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus). I do remember I laughed out loud. I probably also couldn’t believe my dad had actually written the word “ass” in something he gave me – my parents refused to use what they considered to be vulgar language; I’m sure “ass” was a hard no. Maybe this rite of passage made it funnier to me. Regardless, I’ll start the new series on a seasonal note.

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    Slava Ukraini. For the children everywhere.

  • the man in the moon

    the man in the moon


    One of my paternal grandmother’s favorite euphemisms when she became exasperated by the ignorance of someone who had trampled on her last nerve was “he didn’t have any more sense than the man in the moon.” Ma’s euphemisms were more like proclamations that I took to be absolute truth, which meant I had little regard for the man in the moon of my childhood. Yesterday I saw him through different eyes.

    Nana and I took care of our two young granddaughters, four year old Ella and twenty-two month old Molly, while their parents enjoyed a day of food, friends and college football. Activities had been fast and furious for the girls – Nana and I had struggled to keep pace, but late in the afternoon they settled outside playing together in the sandbox where unfortunately an argument over a pink shovel caused a meltdown by Molly which sent Ella scrambling to a small hammock swing nearby. The next thing I knew Molly had climbed in the hammock with Ella (Nana gave her a leg up), and both of them were laughing while Nana pushed them, twirling them around like a ride at the state fair.

    As twilight came too soon for the girls who cried Nana, go higher, go higher I had a Thanksgiving moment for these three: my wife who shared the past twenty-two years with me and the two little girls whose lives added another dimension for our family.

    Finally, Nana stopped swinging the small hammock, and Ella jumped out of the swing. Hey, everybody, I see the moon, she exclaimed with delight. Naynay, come see the moon, she insisted. I left my chair on the deck to do as she told me because that’s how I roll with this four year old. Nana picked up Molly to stand next to Ella who pointed to the moon for her younger sister. Molly said moon, moon while her face beamed brighter than the moonlight.

    I told the girls a story about a man in the moon, but the man I saw with them through their eyes was a kind man – very smart – who simply stayed in the sky to watch over us. Why? Ella asked. Good question, I replied.

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

    “The oak trees were alive with color in the midst of the evergreens. Bright red and yellow leaves catching the sunlight as Daddy and I walked through the brush early that Thanksgiving morning. The smell of the pines was fresh and all around us. We didn’t speak, but this was when I felt most connected to my father. Nature was a bond that united us and the gift that he gave me. And not just in those East Texas woods. He envisioned the whole earth as my territory and set me on my path to discovery. In 1958, this was remarkable for a girl’s father…Perhaps, though, it is the love and closeness of those family ties that leave the sights and sounds that last a lifetime.” (from Deep in the Heart: A Memoir of Love and Longing)

    Thanksgiving blessings to you and your family from ours in South Carolina

  • is a thing of beauty really a joy forever? not necessarily

    is a thing of beauty really a joy forever? not necessarily


    In 1818 the poet John Keats wrote “A thing of beauty is a joy forever…” from his first published book length poem Endymion, the name of a young shepherd boy in love with a moon goddess according to Greek legend.

    In 1954 Nat King Cole sang the title song for the movie Autumn Leaves which was also about a love affair but with a much more sinister plot twist involving mental illness. Think an older Joan Crawford in love with a much younger man played by Cliff Robertson. If she had been a teacher obsessed with a student, she might have been arrested. A love song that began in France (where else?) as a poem in 1945, crossed the pond as a song in America in the late 1940s by pop singer Jo Stafford whose claim to fame was “the wistful singing voice of the American home front during WWII and the Korean War” per an article in the New York Times in July, 2008; however, it was a piano solo by Roger Williams in 1955 that placed the song on the charts for six months.

    The falling leaves drift by the window
    The autumn leaves of red and gold
    I see your lips, the summer kisses
    The sun-burned hands I used to hold

    Since you went away the days grow long
    And soon I’ll hear old winter’s song
    But I miss you most of all my darling
    When autumn leaves start to fall.

    Lah-de-lah-de-dah. Okay, I get it. I’m all about the beautiful leaves of red and gold, drifting by my window or just outside my back door or front door or on the carport or in the yard or most importantly…in my pool. So romantic except for the ongoing war with the endless leaves in the fall.

    Carl checking out leaf situation with me this morning

    the last reminders of summer covered with autumn leaves

    I fought the leaves, and the leaves won.

    but Pride flag keeps watch over us through every season

    The Thanksgiving season is a time of reflection for yesterday’s summer kisses, today’s beautiful leaves of red and gold that will bring old winter’s song with their brown colors signaling a thing of beauty may not quite be a joy forever. So I’ll miss you most of all, my darling, when autumn leaves start to fall.

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