I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Humor

  • new nanny in DC – Mary Poppins she is not


    Bervin was here first thing this morning as he had promised when he called me earlier in the week to arrange a time to come over and take care of our yard for Pretty and me – a job he has held at all four of the different places we’ve called home during the past 19 years. He met me at the door and said with a broad smile “those people in Congress look more like me and you now, don’t they?” Then we both laughed because Bervin is a very handsome middle-aged African American man and I am, well, an old white dyke; but our political beliefs have been as instrumental in keeping us together as the green grass in  summer and the brown leaves in winter. This first week of 2019 brought joy to both of us.

    Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is the best word I have for my feelings as the new Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, took the gavel from a group of Republicans who were clearly out of sorts at this peaceful changing of the political guard in the House of Representatives of the 116th. Congress in the United States of America on January 3rd. When she gathered her grandchildren and the children of other House members to the podium as she took the oath of office in that hallowed chamber for a second time as Speaker, she smiled and smiled and even giggled a time or two. Her grandchildren called her Mimi in an atmosphere one reporter called akin to the excitement of a first day in school. I sat glued to the tv – wondering if this woman of slight stature should have dropped from the sky holding an umbrella instead of a gavel.

    I needn’t have bothered. Her first speech as Speaker was direct and unapologetic while offering olive branches to her colleagues across the aisle in an effort to raise the level of discourse between the two parties. She referenced the symbolism of her leadership in a year in which the country would celebrate the 100th anniversary of  a woman’s right to vote, a year where more than 100 women had been elected to serve in the lower chamber. As she spoke, tv cameras periodically panned the audience of women, people of color,  and people of different faiths now seated in positions of power. To quote my friend Bervin, these folks looked more like him and me than the usual Washington political crowd. They looked more like Americans really look. They looked more democratic with a small “d.”

    Last night I watched Nancy Pelosi’s first televised interview as Speaker. The setting was a town hall meeting on the college campus she graduated from in 1962. She fielded questions from commentator Joy Reid and from students in the audience. The topics were as diverse as the real concerns of the American people: climate change, government shutdown, health care, immigration, border security, clean air, clean water, shrinking middle class, wealth disparity, racism, sexism, lgbtq rights and on and on. Speaker Pelosi was forthright in her answers and any Mary Poppins worries I’d had vanished.

    Hey DC dudes, listen up – there’s a new nanny on Cherry Tree Lane and she’s no Mary Poppins. Here’s her first warning: “the culture of cronyism, corruption and incompetence in the federal government has to stop.”

    Thank you very much. I couldn’t have said it better myself. Honestly, people, enough is way past enough.

    Stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • ’twas three nights before Christmas


    ‘Twas three nights before Christmas, when all through the land

    many creatures were stirring, going home to their clan.

    Their bags were all packed, they were ready to ride

    when all of a sudden they sat down and cried.

    Oh no, there’s no wall, the donald bemoaned

    so Mitch and his guys just voted and groaned.

    Now Nancy, now Chuckie, now Paulie, now Pence

    On Putin, on Turkey, I’m building my fence.

    To the top of Fox news, to the top of my wall,

    now dash away generals,  now dash away all!

    And away they all flew like birds in the wind,

    while Mueller and his team were soon closing in.

    The White House in chaos, no leader in sight,

    Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

    Stay tuned.

     

     

  • ’twas two weeks before Christmas…


    …and all through the yard only Spike and I were stirring,

    Pretty and Charly were inside and warm.

    Pretty and I like to keep the pool open in the winter,

    but it has a much different look from summer fun

    Spike keeps me company whenever I walk around the pool

    (I think he likes the cold, and I like his company)

    so beautiful, but Pretty battles the leaves until they’re all gone

    the bottom of the pool looks like a Rorschach test picture to me sometimes 

    even the bottle tree loses its colors in wintertime

    Spike is ready to go inside to check on Pretty

    While family members in the upstate of South Carolina have been without power this weekend after unusually large amounts of snowfall, we have been covered in grey clouds peppering us with rain, rain and more rain. Almost cold enough for snow, but not quite.

    I am reminded of Granny Selma’s motto: Sheila, we have to smile more on rainy days.

    Think about it, and stay tuned.

     

  • my mother reads from Deep in the Heart


    “I love this book,” my eighty-three-year-old mother says, startling me awake from my nap with her words. I had drifted off while sitting in the dark blue recliner in her room in the memory care unit of the assisted living facility she’d called home for the past two years. She was asleep when I sat down in the recliner.

    I open my eyes to see her sitting across from me. She’s in the small wooden chair with the straight back. I can’t believe she’s holding the copy of my book, Deep in the Heart, which I gave her two years ago. I never saw the book since then on any of my visits, and I assumed she either threw it away or lost it. I was also stunned to see how worn it was. The only other book she had that I’d seen in the same condition was The Holy Bible.

    “I know all of the people in this book,” she continues. “And so many of the stories, too.”

    “Yes, you do,” I agree. “The book is about our family.”

    And then with wonder, I hear another reader say my words. My mother reads to me as she rarely did when I was a child. She was always too busy with the tasks of studying when she went to college, preparing for classes when she taught school, cooking, cleaning, ironing, practicing her music for Sunday and choir practice – she couldn’t sit still unless my dad insisted she stop to catch her breath.

    But, today, she reads to me. She laughs at the right moments and makes sure to read “with expression” as the teacher in her remembers. Occasionally, she turns a page and already knows what the next words are. I’m amazed and moved. I have to fight the tears that could spoil the moment for us. I think of the costs of dishonesty on my part, and denial on hers. The sense of loss is overwhelming.

    The words connect us as she reads. For the first time in a very long while, we’re at ease with each other. Just the two of us in the little room with words that renew a connection severed by a distance not measured by miles. She chooses stories that are not about her and her daughter’s differences. That’s her prerogative, because she’s the reader.

    She reads from a place deep within her that has refused to surrender these memories. When she tires, she closes the book and sits back in the chair.

    “We’ll read some more another time,” she says.

    I lean closer to her.

    “Yes, we will. It makes me so happy to know you like the book. It took me two years to write these stories, and I’m glad you enjoy them so much.”

    “Two years,” she repeats. “You have a wonderful vocabulary.”

    Note this is an excerpt from a chapter called The Dementia Dialogues – Stage 1 from my book:

    The mysterious mother – daughter relationship complicated by a thief we call dementia is one of the themes of one of my favorite books. The cover shows a ten-year-old me struggling with gloves I’m sure I didn’t want to wear standing between my hip crew-cut dad and my correctly posed mom, my favorite aunt Lucille standing next to her brother, and my aunt’s daughter Melissa looking somewhat perplexed in an adorable bonnet sure to be the hit of the Easter service at the Richards Baptist Church.

    Stay tuned.

     

     

  • thanksgiving is relative


    “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. 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 in a girl’s father…

    To this day, Thanksgiving remains my favorite holiday. It seems less commercial than the others and struggles to hold its own before the onslaught of merchandising that we call Christmas. The dinners in the fancy restaurants and hotels and cafeterias never measure up to the feasts my grandmothers served their families.

    Perhaps, though, it is the love and closeness of those family ties that leave the sights and sounds that last a lifetime.”

    This excerpt from the chapter Thanksgiving in the Piney Woods is from my first book Deep in the Heart: A Memoir of Love and Longing. I was so surprised when the book received a 2008 GCLS Literary Award – and thrilled, too.

    my family on my grandparents’ front steps circa 1956

    (I am seated on the bottom row in my flannel shirt and corduroy pants,

    unsmiling, at my mother’s request for some strange reason)

    Today is a different Thanksgiving in a different home in a different state in a different century, but I still believe in the love and closeness of family ties that bring the sights and sounds that last a lifetime. I know they have in my lifetime.

    And now for Thanksgiving in 2019 we are beyond Thunder Dome thankful for the new family member we love to hold and hope she looks our way with smiles. Pretty is beside herself with our granddaughter Ella Elisabeth James, and so am I.

    Ella loves her NanaT

    Pretty and I wish all of you in cyberspace that love and closeness on this special day for thanksgiving.

    Stay tuned.