I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Humor

  • thank God for unanswered prayer


    If I were straight and young, I would be a Garth Brooks groupie. Seriously. Alas, I am neither so I will be content with listening to him via Alexa along with his other gazillion fans. One of my favorite country western songs he wrote and performed has the catchy title Thank God for Unanswered Prayer. In this particular hit tune the singer and his wife have a random encounter at a high school football game with an old flame of his that stirs a memory of the intensity of the passion he felt for this ex along with the fervent prayers he uttered to God for things to work out with her back in the day. As you might imagine from the title of the song, he concludes his life is much better without her and that some of “God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.”

    My theology is suspect. Because I was raised in a conservative Southern Baptist environment in the 1950s and 60s, I developed serious misgivings about my place in the hereafter; but I’m not wrestling that old demon today. Instead, I was reminded of a few of my own unanswered prayers when I heard Garth’s song.

    A funny flashback came to me of a deep-sea fishing trip off the Oregon coast when I was in my early twenties. A couple of the older women I supervised at Brodie Hotel Supply in Seattle invited me to go with them and their husbands on a salmon fishing adventure early one cloudy Saturday morning. To make a very long fishing tale short, I have a vivid memory of praying to God from the boat’s only bathroom where I spent most of the day as grown men pounded on the bathroom door – begging me to please get out. The captain’s apologies to me  for the roughest seas he’d sailed in years from the other side of the bathroom door mattered not. I begged him to contact the Coast Guard to send a helicopter to rescue me from the wretched or retched boat and I promised God if She would just get me off that boat I would never bother her again with prayer from the open seas. The prayer went unanswered until the eight-hour fishing expedition was complete. Too little, too late.  I counted it unanswered, and I was not thankful.

    Regardless of my faith and its well-documented decline in my later years, I confess to again praying for specific outcomes in situations that were desperate at moments during the vicissitudes of life. On one particular occasion I believed I wouldn’t survive the loss of an eighteen-year relationship that ended when I was fifty-four years old.  I was undone, drowning in a different kind of sea with very rough waters. I fervently prayed my relationship would survive, although my psychiatrist at the time wasn’t encouraging during our sessions. She did, however, prescribe fabulous drugs

    But just like Garth Brooks in his song, I thank God for that unanswered prayer twenty years ago. Pretty became my personal Coast Guard that rescued me from the depths of my despair with her laughter and love as she breezed passionately into the core of my existence. Pretty  is the spicy salsa for the rather tortilla chip person I’ve always been, and her rescue gave me hope for happiness. We have had that happiness – and then some. We are not strangers to struggles nor immune to heartbreak in the years we’ve been together, but the joys comfort us when we are called upon to share the sorrows.

    As the world around us tilts on its Covid-19 axis today, I confess my fears for all of our futures. I spoke to an old friend from Texas last night who reminded me we had been through and survived many health crises during our lives including polio, HIV-AIDS, smallpox, the bluebonnet plague – to name a few. Pretty and I laughed so hard about the bluebonnet plague when I got off the phone that I called my cousin Melissa who lives in Texas. She was equally entertained and added that the bluebonnet plague was definitely seasonal which caused Pretty and me to laugh uproariously all over again.

    Share a laugh, stay sane and safe wherever you struggle today.

    Stay tuned.

     

  • not what we’d hoped she would be


    In June, 2014 Pretty, Spike and I took one of our famous family weekend road trips through our neighboring state of Georgia that began with Finnster Fest in Summerville, continued to Berry College near Rome, with a final stop in Milledgeville before turning east toward South Carolina and home. Milledgeville was the home of Flannery O’Connor, an American author (1925 – 1964) born in Savannah, Georgia who wrote fiction set in the rural south. Her thirty-two short stories are considered by many to be some of the best published in the 20th century. In November, 2014 I reflected on that trip.

    This past summer we visited Flannery O’Connor’s home at Andalusia Farms outside of Milledgeville, Georgia.  It was my kind of place – her mother’s old dairy barn, Flannery’s peacock coop, a small frame house where their caretakers lived, and a bigger white farmhouse with a screened front porch that overlooked the pine tree lined road leading up to the farm from the highway.  Rural, agrarian, somewhat secluded.

    The author and her mother lived on the farm together until Flannery died at the age of  thirty-nine from lupus. The illness limited her activities in her last years but according to our docent Flannery loved to sit on the screened front porch in the afternoon to entertain and be entertained by visitors who came from places around the country for an opportunity to meet her. Often Flannery’s relatives who lived in the local area “dropped by” to meet the O’Connor’s guests. On one of these occasions several people were chatting while they sat in the rocking chairs on the porch and one of Flannery’s cousins was relaying a particularly boring story that did not entertain Ms. O’Connor.

    Flannery leaned over to a person sitting next to her and said in a voice loud enough for everyone on the porch to hear, “She’s just not what we’d hoped she would be.”

    Pretty and I laughed to think of Flannery O’Connor  making that remark from her rocking chair on the front porch. We laughed again after we left Andalusia Farms on the ride home to Columbia. We still laugh at the line months later and have now appropriated it when we share an inside joke – something or someone is just not what we’d hoped they would be, are they?

    Actually, though, I believe there’s more truth than poetry in the remark.  Disappointment is a universal experience that strikes when we least expect it and lingers longer than we’d prefer.  When disappointment comes from a person, the feeling generally comes from a person we love, trust or admire.  When the letdown comes from a place, well then, politics or organized religion is usually involved; when it comes from a football team, losing is the culprit.

    Here’s my remedy for most disappointments: lower your expectations.  Forget lofty idol worshipping – it didn’t work well for the followers of Baal in the Old Testament, and it’s likely to run into trouble with people we put on pedestals today.  Pedestals topple like the walls of Jericho with just as much noise, confusion, pain and suffering. None of us live in a glass house with the luxury of casting the first stone at a fallen pedestal so if a particular pedestal falls, add a dash of forgiveness…seventy times seven is about right. Where little has been forgiven, little love is shown. How do I know? The Bible tells me so.

    Politics and organized religion, on the other hand,  tend to merge in disappointing convergence with neither being what we’d originally hoped they would be. They’re so far gone we’ve forgotten what we’d hope they would be. That’s disappointment of epic proportions. I got nothing.

    Finally, as for football teams, losing occurs in the midst of much noise, confusion, pain and suffering but don’t lower your expectations.  Simply fire the coach.

    He’s probably not what we’d hoped he would be.

    Stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

  • the words she didn’t say


    The year was 2013, the month was November, the day was the day before Thanksgiving  when I originally published this post. Am I (a) too lazy to write new material (b) too stressed by Covid-19 to be creative (c) having fun looking again at my cyberspace legacy (d) all of the above.  Let’s go with (d).  I hope you enjoy along with me.

    the words she didn’t say

    She wanted to speak, but the words wouldn’t come.

    They stuck in her mind like pavement to gum.

    Release me, release me the words cried today.

    I’m afraid, she said, as she held them at bay.

    We will be heard, they told her with force.

    She shook her head to quiet their source.

    They rattled around in the core of her brain,

    But got up again and began to raise Cain.

    Leave me alone, she shouted out loud.

    They mocked her and told her they came in a crowd.

    So even if caught and turned  out to sea,

    Others would come and one day be free.

    It must be the holidays because I’ve just written a poem with the same meter as ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas. Good Lord.

    My usually introspective self typically becomes more reflective during the holiday season, and I believe this poem officially crosses the line to brooding.  However, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year; Pretty and I once again look forward to making the trip to the upstate to spend an evening with her family in the recreation hall of the First Baptist Church of Fingerville, South Carolina.  Even if I didn’t love her family, I’d go to a Baptist Church with that name.

    To everything there is a season, and this is the season for being thankful before the madness that is Christmas and New Year’s Day overwhelms us.  My wish for each of you is the familiar admonition to count your blessings and name them one by one. And if there are words you want or need to say to someone, set them free.

    From our family to yours – Happy Thanksgiving!

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    From our family to yours,  we are thankful for you. Please be safe and stay tuned.

  • ella goes zero to six months in sixty nana seconds


    Ella and her Nanas from October 1, 2019 – April 01, 2020

    Happy Six Month Birthday, Ella Elisabeth James!

    You give us joy and hope for the future!

    Stay tuned.

     

     

     

  • a prize fighter named Pain


    Reaching deep, deeper, deepest into my archives this time with a story that seems appropriate for our collective contemporary selves across the world. I offer this post first published here in September, 2011. I lifted it from my third book, I’ll Call It Like I See It, which is how my blog got its name. 

    Let me introduce you to my new friend Pain…well, not really new…and not actually a friend. I’m learning to live with him, but he’s a stubborn, persistent adversary.  I must have known him intermittently through my more than six decades of life, although the encounters were brief and unremarkable.  Painful episodes are the children of Pain.

    I met Pain himself three and a half years ago.  The mature, grown-up Pain.  He came to my body through the hardest part of me—my head.  He moved into the right side of my scalp and down my forehead to encircle my right eye and cheek.  He followed the nerves that travel through my face.  He had a cute little name that rhymes with tingles.  Shingles.  Such a harmless name for the devil who rules my life. He moved into his new home with the excitement of a pioneer staking a claim for a homestead in the Wild West during the glory days when every vista was unexplored territory.

    Pain is a hard worker who never sleeps.  He is relentless in his pursuit of control and domination.  Medicines amuse him with their efforts to ease his grip. He is like a prize fighter whose gloves are cinched for eighteen rounds. Medication sends him to the corner to be renewed, but he’s up and ready when the bell sounds. He is a bold opponent who stoops to cheap shots during the fray.

    When the sun goes down at the end of the day, Pain only works harder; sleep and rest flee from him.  He is their biggest fear, their worst enemy.  He loves the darkness of the night because it reminds him of his own nature. Pain pummels me with a ferocious pounding unmatched by mortal foes.  I understand him better now, and I know his tactics.  I know he leaves after a long fight to make me think I’ve won.  I step into the center of the ring with my hands held high in a victory salute.  It’s clear—Pain is the loser.

    But then he returns.  Sometimes to the head that now bears the scars of our warfare, sometimes with a fatigue that makes movement impossible because I have hit a wall which may as well be made of concrete.  Always to my eyes – which blur, burn and water incessantly as they produce protein deposits splattering the annoying eyeglasses essential  to replace the contact lens I used to wear.

    As I grow older and my immune system weakens, Pain appears stronger and more powerful.  I have a rendezvous with Pain, as the poet once said of Death.  I meet him on whatever battlefields he chooses, and we engage in our struggle in quiet isolation.  The stakes are high in this duel with no seconds available to offer assistance, no valiant rescue on the horizon.  It is just Pain and me.

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    I’m sure I don’t say welcome to my new followers often enough, but I appreciate everyone who clicks “follow”  – you all give me encouragement to carry on. Many of you live on other continents that are foreign to me; but our shared humanity, particularly in this time of Covid-19, connects us across the oceans. Thank you all for taking time to read and reflect.

    Stay tuned.