I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

For any who want more, complete list of all posts by month since 2011

  • I Is Flawed. You Is Flawed. We Is All Flawed.


    Since Lance Armstrong had to look up the definition of “cheat” to figure out if what he did throughout a storied cycling career was wrong, I decided to look up “flawed” in my trusty Oxford American Thesaurus that I use for help in my writing.  His explanation of sorts for his inexplicable ruination of the lives of his friends and fellow cyclists and their families in addition to the hopes and dreams of fans all over the world who rallied around his comeback kid cycling career for over a decade– was that he was “flawed.”

    Flaw noun 1 a flaw in his character.  fault, defect, imperfection, blemish, failing, foible, shortcoming, weakness, weak spot

    Aha.  I recognize myself and many of my friends and family in this definition.  Indeed. I fear I am eat up with flawed and find that Medicare age doesn’t necessarily correct the faults and weaknesses of my earlier years.  A good example I can point to is my sweet tooth.  Is it possible to have more than one?  If it’s possible, I think I’ve always had more than one sweet tooth.  I rarely meet a dessert I don’t like and even as I write this I wish I had one of Dick Hubbard’s delicious pineapple cupcakes and why stop at one?    If I weighed within the acceptable guidelines for a five feet two-inch sixty-six-year-old woman, my cravings for sugar wouldn’t be a flaw but alas, I need to be the height of the beanstalk Jack climbed to have a body mass index of less than thirty-two.  I have several less obvious foibles, but I guarantee you they are visible to my girl Teresa who will agree that I is flawed on many levels.

    Much of the chatter on ESPN today following Mr. Armstrong’s Oprah Outing last night has focused on the word legacy.   What will be Lance Armstrong’s legacy in light of his doping and his lyin’ and cheatin’ heart?  Really, it’s perfect material for a country western song.  Oh gosh, it’s already been written.  Your cheatin’ heart will tell on you.  Ain’t that right, Hank?  Ain’t that right, Bill?

    Legacy noun 2…inheritance, heritage, tradition, hand-me-down, residue.

    We will hear the  word legacy more and more as President Barak Obama takes the oath of office Monday for his second and final inauguration.  The political pundits are already sniffing around in that general area as the inaugural festivities will be front and center fodder for the media this weekend and for weeks to come.  The traditions and heritage the President leaves in four years will define his presidency as surely as Lance Armstrong’s confession to Oprah last night defined his.   The residue from that interview isn’t pretty and to borrow from the words of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg: “…the world will little note nor long remember what we said here, but it will never forget what we did here.”

    Legacy smegacy Lance.  I’m afraid your legacy is lunacy.

    Lunacy noun 2…madness, insanity, foolishness, folly, foolhardiness, stupidity, idiocy, irrationality, illogicality, senselessness, absurdity, absurdness, silliness, inanity, ludicrousness…

    You get the picture.  And  if the cycling shoe fits?

  • Wanted: New Scout (s)?


    Mea culpa, mea culpa for my neglect of this site in recent weeks.   I have no excuses.  I appear to be caught  in the Land of New Book Promotion with no GPS for successful navigation and I believe I need a new scout like Robert Horton was for the 1950s TV show Wagon Train.  He always kept Ward Bond and the train on the right trail with no frivolous detours and, other than a few attacks by marauders here and there, the train inched its way slowly week by week toward the Promised Land.  Yes, that’s exactly the kind of leadership I need.  A new scout.  Maybe I need two new scouts…or even three…or possibly this trip requires an entire Cyberspace Posse of Scouts!

    Raise your right hand and repeat after me, “I do solemnly swear to put on my thinking cap for two minutes and send one good idea to promote I’ll Call It Like I See It to Ward Bond a/k/a the writer sheila morris so help me  Robert Horton.”

    Just to get you started, here are a few of the watering holes I’m currently searching for:  book clubs, independent book stores, meetups, house parties, literary roundtables, book festivals, Oprah.   I thought Oprah had real potential but then she got caught up in this whole Lance Armstrong thing.  Seriously Oprah.   What’s more important?  Lance Armstrong and his lifetime of lies or I’ll Call it Like I See It with its treasures of truth?  I think you know.

    I promise to write more as soon as we make camp for the night…Wagons – Ho!!

  • A Hard Candy Christmas


    I’ll be just fine and dandy,

    Lord it’s like a hard candy Christmas.

    I’m barely getting through tomorrow,

    but still I won’t let sorrow bring me way down.

    ——  Carol Hall lyrics from the musical

    The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas

    Gosh, the hard candy Christmas has gone viral.   I thought we could keep it local with just a few hits along the holiday trail stories but nope, Newtown, Connecticut changed the name of that tune.   We Americans have a tragedy of unspeakable grief that will quickly reverberate in cyberspace around the world to a populace who will ask themselves, What is wrong with those people in America?

    I think it’s a fair question and one that we must ask ourselves.   What is wrong with us?   How do we enable and encourage this rage and senseless violence against our own?   Why do we have a Columbine in our not-too-distant history and how will these same historians record the massacres in Aurora, Colorado and at Virginia Tech?  What can possibly be written about the Sandy Hook Elementary School horror of losing twelve little girls and eight little boys and six adults who were their educators in a few minutes on a regular Friday morning at their public school.  Much will be written through the coming years, but what we do in response to these shocking events will define our culture and our country.

    To the politicians in Washington I say, You need to become statesmen and stateswomen.  You need to set aside your vitriolic verbal attacks on each other.  You are the adults in our family, and we have placed our trust in you by electing you to represent us and when what we see on our Ipads and Iphones and other high-tech gadgets as well as on our regular old television programs is bitterness and bickering and bashing each other verbally, you’re setting a bad example for your children.  You make them believe that rage is not only acceptable but necessary.   Take a deep breath.  Step back for a moment.  Look at yourselves and see what images you project for your people.   Could you please just play nice.

    To the parents who have brought children into our world and have great expectations for their futures and who now are bipolar between anger and anguish, I say I’m so sorry.    No one deserves this.   No one is being punished for removing God from Sandy Hook Elementary School.  God isn’t in this equation or else we would have to blame Him for allowing the assailant to have weapons, wouldn’t we?  Not so fast, my friend, or as my daddy and Ann Richards used to say, That old dog won’t hunt.  But what can we do?  Should we as parents insist on police protection for our children in all public schools regardless of age?   Would police protectors be able to thwart the enraged and armed assailants?  These are the questions we ask ourselves.

    Which brings me to the central dilemma of the complex  challenge of early identification and intervention for our Angry Ones and that is, of course, beyond Thunder Dome to me.  Our children are now raised in a culture of violence.  They play games with it, they sing songs about it, their heroes are violent athletes, their movie stars make action movies with so much “action” their hearing is impaired when they leave a theater, their country sends soldiers to places they have to learn to pronounce and spell like Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria…Viet Nam…Korea..and these soldiers kill other people in the name of peacekeeping.   Our children are surrounded by violence.   They may go to sleep with the sound of gunfire in their neighborhood and on their street corners.  They may wake the next morning to find a friend, cousin, uncle, father or brother has died during a battle over what?   Drugs?   Gangs?  Money?   Territory?  Aha.  There we have it.  There is no escaping the violence so why on earth would we be surprised that these children who are accustomed to violence, who have access to weapons, would shoot us when we make them mad or when we are, well, just being ourselves and they don’t like us that way?

    This is the season of hope, joy and celebration for some; the Prince of Peace and Santa Claus are the bearers of Good News and Great Gifts for many of us. But it is also a season of sadness for those who have lost family during 2012 and who will be reminded that their holiday season is different this year. The season won’t be the same – ever.  Some people will struggle to find the money to give their children what they want under the tree.   Friction and tension will make family gatherings more problematic than peaceful.  In our sense of hurry and anxiety over putting food on the table we might miss the opportunity to say: I love you today, I love you every day and you will always be special to me.

    I remember a hard candy Christmas with the disappointment of not getting what I wanted from Santa Claus but rather getting a sack of penny candy of bright different colors that tasted alternately sweet and sour but couldn’t be chewed at first because it was so hard.  Gradually though, if you waited long enough, you could bite the smaller piece in two and swallow them both.  Success.  Astonishingly delicious.

    I expected a hard candy Christmas personally this year for a number of reasons, but I wasn’t prepared for a national one.  Regardless, here it is and my hope is that America will never be the same – ever.  That our national consciousness is raised to include in our vocabulary the words kindness and reconciliation and forgiveness and a genuine passion for a better world.   We’ve waited long enough.  We have tasted both the sweet and the sour and, as Dolly Parton sings through the lyrics of Carol Hall, we won’t let our sorrows bring us down.

  • Takin’ Any Comfort That I Can


    I’ve been too long in the wind, too long in the rain,

    Takin’ any comfort that I can.

    Lookin’ back and longin’ for the freedom of my chains

    and lying in your loving arms again.

    ——  Kris Kristofferson

    For the past few days I’ve been haunted by these lyrics and of course I couldn’t remember the third line exactly so I researched the words on the infallible source of all information: my computer.   It knows everything and I am always curious about HOW it knows everything but then I accept its wisdom and move on.  For example, I discovered that Kris Kristofferson wrote the song and recorded it with Rita Coolidge.  I wasn’t surprised really because Kris is a wonderful lyricist and sang with a number of women through the years.   I was totally surprised, though, at the list of artists who had recorded the Loving Arms ballad.   Olivia Newton-John.  Dobie Gray.  Glen Campbell.  Mr. Presley himself.  Kenny Rogers.   And more recently, the Dixie Chicks.  I was also stunned to learn that I can send the tune to my cell phone as a ringtone.   I’ll pass on that opportunity for now.

    I digress.  It’s common for the words of a country music song to occupy my mind for  several days.  I like country music.  I listen to country music when I’m driving around in my old Dodge Dakota pickup by myself.  When I’m in Texas, I typically leave the kitchen radio set to the country legends station in Houston and turn the radio on as soon as I get up in the morning– right before I pop the top of my first Diet Coke of the day.   I turn it off late in the evening and the little click the radio makes is my own version of Taps.

    I digress further.  I tried today to reflect on the words and why I had the song in my head in a kind of loop.   I’ve been too long in the wind, too long in the rain.   Over and over again I sing it.   Sometimes I even sing out loud, but mostly it’s inside.   Were those the lines that mattered?   Was that the secret code?   Nope.  No more suspense.  No more digression.   The key word is comfort.   Takin’ any comfort that I can.  I love the word Comfort.  You can have your words Solace and Console and Ease and Reassure if you want to.   Give me Comfort.   Seriously, give me comfort.  Give us all comfort.

    Blessed are those that mourn, for they shall be comforted.  I’m not too sure about this beatitude, but I’ll let it slide because I’d like to believe it.   All of us who mourn shall be comforted.  Our frontage road of grief will slowly merge into the passing lanes of optimism and hope if we are willing to pay the toll required to enter.  We pay a price for the passing lanes that make our travels easier as we watch our grief fade away in the rear-view mirror, IF we are fortunate enough to have the resources within ourselves to cover the costs.

    Obviously I have recently been on vacation in the northeastern part of the United States where I spent too much time and money on tollways.

    And now I know the third line of the song perfectly.  Lookin’ back and longin’ for the freedom of my chains.  What a great line it is, too, but that’s a subject for another story and I’ll let you ponder it on your own  while I say good night and take my comfort in two loving arms again.

    P.S. This was originally posted last August, and I find myself once again preoccupied with the need for comfort after the loss last week of my aunt who was one of the most important women in my life.  She was the last intimate connection to a generation in my family that represented the best of my childhood recollections and yet became a close friend in my adult years.  I was lucky – really lucky – to spend more time with her in the last year than I had been with her in the previous forty.  We had a good time together.  We laughed a lot.

    Mostly, though, I will miss her love of my writing.  She wanted to read every word I wrote and always said it was wonderful.  Each time one of my stories failed to win the money prize, she said it would happen next time.  She believed in me and my stories and loved me unconditionally.   It is difficult to say goodbye.  Instead, I will say good night to my favorite aunt from her favorite niece.

  • Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh


    GOLD, FRANKINCENSE AND MYRRH

    A CHRISTMAS STORY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

                And it came to pass in these days that there went out a decree from the personal laptop computers and hand-held computers and iPads and iPods and high-definition televisions and Sirius radio satellite stations that all the world should be buying gifts for Christmas in 4G.   And all went to buy gifts, every one into his/her favorite retailer, or online.

    There was an old woman who lived in the world

    and her eyes saw and her ears heard the decree,

    but her heart refused to buy 4G.

    For, you see, too many Christmases had come and gone

    And the old woman’s heart had turned to stone.

    The gifts she wanted couldn’t be wrapped.

    They were buried in memories too deeply trapped.

    But, behold, the old woman was visited by wise women this year,

    And they came bearing gifts of good cheer.

    Gold, frankincense and myrrh from days of old?   Not quite.

    But the women followed the same bright light.

    I’m a basic Bah, Humbug Christmas person and have been for years.   I’m not clinically depressed during the Holiday Season, but neither am I joyful.  I resist the pressure to shop ‘til I drop, but that isn’t limited to a particular time of the year, either.  I’m considering the possibility I may suffer from borderline Scrooge disorder or at a minimum, Holiday Harrumphs.

    This year is different.   I’ve been jolted and shaken out of my cynicism and once again believe in the Magic that is Christmas.   I think my transformation actually began last year when my new neighbors in Texas on Worsham Street decorated their homes and yards with spectacular exterior holiday lighting.   They adorned trees, bushes, windows, doors, porches, benches, roofs – anything they could find to attach a string of lights – and the little street came alive with white icicle lights and plain white lights and multi-colored lights of all shapes and sizes that glowed and blinked and gave the appearance of a miniature Disneyland.  I absolutely loved them and of course, I had to participate with my own lights on our house on the street.  I felt my Christmas ice melt just a little each time I turned the switch that lit my bright lights.  This year the street is again beautiful, and I thank my neighbors for the inspiration of their lighting traditions.

    I miss my family at Christmas, the family that defined Christmas for me as a child.  That family is gone as that time and place are gone, but the child inside me mourns their loss every time I hear “Silent Night” and other carols sung during this time of the year.  We were musical people and much of our holiday revolved around music in our churches where my mother was always responsible for the Christmas Cantata.  Sometimes she played the piano for it so my dad could lead the church choir and sometimes she drafted another pianist so she could lead the choir herself.  Regardless, music was the reason for the season for us and we celebrated the season in church.

    Family has been re-defined in my adult life by my partner and four children in furry suits that I adore.  I have a step-son who now has a girlfriend he lives with and so our family grows together.  Through the past forty years I’ve been away from Texas I’ve been fortunate to have wonderful friends who have become closer than the DNA-linked group I left behind.  In my gay and lesbian community in South Carolina, the term “family” is a word we use to describe ourselves.  The question, “Do you think she’s family?” is translated, “Do you think she’s a lesbian like us?”  Being part of a marginalized sub-culture creates strong bonds within that environment and my friends have been simply the best.

    Coming home to Texas to live has connected me once again with my DNA family and that’s been an incredible experience and part of the Magic of Christmas for me the last two years. First cousins, second cousins, third cousins once removed and the people they’ve married and their children are good, and a few questionable, surprises for me.  Gathering for a cousins’ Christmas potluck luncheon or going with cousins to the Montgomery Annual Cookie Walk or having cousins come to our home or visiting in their homes rekindle good memories of the times when our hair wasn’t white and our figures were slimmer and the great-grandparents at the table weren’t us. I see these relatives and I am a part of them, and I feel good to belong to them at Christmas. Our conversations honor and celebrate our heritage and the ones who are no longer with us.  We laugh and cry together because we are moved by our memories. My family is a Christmas gift.

    But just as the familiar story goes of the Wise Men who followed a bright light to Bethlehem and brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the baby boy in the manger, Wise Women in my life have brought gifts that rocked my Christmas complacency. My partner surprised me with an early gift at Thanksgiving when I went home to her in South Carolina.  It’s worth its weight in gold to me.  It’s a western saddle made of leather and rides a wooden quilt holder that a neighbor gave me when she saw the saddle.  It’s a perfect combination and looks good in my Texas den underneath a picture of a cowboy sitting on a fence.  Whenever I look at the saddle, I think of two of my favorite things: my partner who knew me well enough to buy this treasure for me and my days of riding horses as a child. I feel the love of the giver of this perfect gift.

    Frankincense was used in ancient times for medicinal and calming purposes including treatment for depression.  Burning frankincense was also thought to carry prayers to heaven by people in those days.  One of the Wise Women in my life gave me my own version of frankincense last week when she bought a plane ticket to South Carolina for me to be with my partner for Christmas.  I marvel at this generosity from a friend who surely loves me and who chased away the potential Christmas blues. This gift came from prayers to heaven that were unasked but answered on the wings of a snow white dove called US Airways and the spirit that is the Magic of Christmas in the heart of my friend.

    Myrrh is an Arabic word for bitter and it is the resin that comes from a tree that grows in the semi-desert regions of Africa and the Red Sea.  The Chinese used it for centuries to treat wounds and bruises and bleeding.  The Egyptians used myrrh as an embalming oil for their mummies.  Yesterday I received another gift that reminded me of myrrh – not the bitterness nor the embalming properties – but the unexpected present was a live blooming cactus plant that arrived at my house via a congenial UPS driver who I believe thinks he is Santa Claus.  When I opened the box and removed the moss packing per the enclosed instructions, I was stunned by the beauty of the pink blooms and the deep rich green of the plant.  The gift came from another Wise Woman who is married to my cousin in Rosenberg, Texas and was an additional reminder of the Magic that lives in Christmas.  Every day I’ll see these blooms and think of my cousins who sent them and the healing power beauty affords us when we take a moment to consider it.  I’ve always loved a Christmas cactus.

    Gold, frankincense and myrrh with a 21st century twist.  The Christmas story of Mary and Joseph’s plight in the manger in Bethlehem has been told and re-told for thousands of years.  Regardless of your belief, it is a tender tale of a family who welcomes a baby boy into a world of conflict and hardship and hopes he will somehow change it for the better.   The same conflicts continue two thousand years later and hardships of every shape and description plague our families today, but we move on.  Sometimes forward, sometimes backward.  But onward we go.  And in this spirit of hope for a better world where peace becomes the norm and hardships are made more bearable, I abandon my Bah, Humbug  with a Merry Christmas to all!