I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Life

  • Ships That Don’t Come In


    “To those who stand on empty shores and spit against the wind
    and those who wait forever for ships that don’t come in.”

    Joe Diffie recorded these words written by Paul Nelson and Dave Gibson in 1992 and I hear them several times a week on my favorite country legends radio station. Each time I listen to them I am transported to the 1950s to vivid childhood memories of my maternal grandmother who told me all the things we would do when her ship came in. We would take wonderful trips from our little town in Grimes County, Texas to exotic far-away places like Maryland to visit her brother Arnold and his wife Amelia and California to visit her favorite sister Orrie in Los Angeles. We would stop at the See’s Candy store in Los Angeles and buy all the chocolates we could eat. We could travel whenever we wanted to because she wouldn’t have to clerk at Mr. Witt’s General Store any more. She would buy my mother a new piano and my dad a new car. She would buy me anything I wanted. Life would be good.

    I will be seven years younger this Sunday than she was when she was buried on my birthday in 1972 at the age of seventy-four. She believed her ship never came in, and I understand why. Much of her life she stood on empty shores and must have felt she was spitting against the wind. Powerless in the face of poverty and its constraints. Overwhelming loneliness when my mother and dad and I moved out of her home in 1958. Severe depression with sporadic primitive treatments and debilitating medications. Spitting against the wind.

    Yet for me, life with her was a ship that did come in. The love I felt from her was as steadfast as the love I feel from my dogs, and they adore me regardless of what I say or do. The fun we shared when I was growing up was worth far more than a trip to Maryland or California could ever bring. My time with her was priceless.

    Birthdays are an opportunity to celebrate another year under our belts which need to be notched a little looser these days. For those of us who choose to reflect, birthdays are a godsend. We can ponder and ponder the meaning of life and whether we think our life is well-lived. At my age I can also mull over my legacy. I’d like to think I have one.

    As for ships, well, I’ve had my share come into shores. Some have stayed longer than others and some are still with me, but all the ones that came in left their imprints in my sand. Life is good.

  • First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage? Ask The Supremes


    The dust has settled after the media frenzy surrounding the Supreme Court hearings on two cases affecting the future of same-sex marriage in the United States. Whew! The gays and gay-friendlies partied. Jon Stewart skewered DOMA and its supporters on Comedy Central. The Republicans tried desperately to find someone – ANYONE – in their party to explain their position on marriage on CNN in a way that the general citizenry wouldn’t characterize as narrow-minded at best or bigoted at worst. That search is ongoing and a generous reward is offered to the finder.

    The hearings are over and the rulings expected in June. Eight Associate Justices and the Chief Justice hold the key to opening doors of equality that have been slammed shut since the founding fathers held these truths to be Self-evident in the Declaration of Independence in 1776. “…That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

    I am amazed to realize I have seen all of these Supremes don the robes of the Court at the end of the required appointment process. Clarence Thomas is the only Southerner. He was born in Georgia and is a Yale law school graduate. He is 64 years old and the only appointee of President George H.W. Bush. His appointment process was ugly, nationally televised and his robes permanently tainted. He is the only Supreme who is African-American.

    Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotamayor and Elena Kagan were all born in New York. Justice Ginsburg is the oldest member of the Court at the ripe age of 80. She is a Columbia law school graduate but studied at Harvard for a time. She was appointed by President Bill Clinton. Chief Justice Roberts was appointed by President George W. Bush and is a Harvard graduate. He is 58 years old. Justice Sotomayor is also 58 years old and is a Yale graduate who was appointed by President Barak Obama. She is the sole Hispanic Supreme. Justice Kagan is another Obama appointee and is 53 years old which makes her the youngest member of the Court. At the time of her appointment she was Dean of the Harvard Law School.

    Three other Associate Justices were Harvard law school graduates: Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Stephen G. Breyer. Both Justices Kennedy and Breyer were born in California and are in the same age brackets. Kennedy is 76 and Breyer is 74, but they had different presidential appointments. President Ronald Reagan appointed Kennedy and President Bill Clinton appointed Breyer. President Reagan also appointed Justice Scalia who was born in New Jersey and is now 77 years old. He is the father of nine children which puts him in a category all by himself on the bench and how he ever had time to be a Supreme is beyond me.

    The final Associate Justice Samuel Anthony Alito, Jr. shares Scalia’s home state of New Jersey and is the third Yale graduate on the Court. He is 63 years old and was appointed by President George W. Bush.

    In summation, Your Honors, I find that the fate of same-sex marriage in the United States in 2013 rests with folks who graduated either from Yale or Harvard law schools and were born in the New York/ New Jersey area on the East Coast or California on the West Coast with one stray Southerner thrown in for good measure. Well, maybe not good measure, but certainly thrown in.

    The question before us today is whether this hodgepodge of political appointees will take its place in history as the Court that restores the unalienable rights of a minority of its LGBT citizens who have been made to feel “lesser than” and treated with discrimination that often threatens their Lives and their Liberty and always endangers their pursuit of Happiness.

    I respectfully ask the Court to stand and deliver on the promises that have been the hopes and dreams of all Americans for more than two hundred years.

    I rest my case.

  • The Philosoper Winnie The Pooh


    015

    How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.

    —- A. A. Milne

  • Takin’ Any Comfort That I Can


    Takin’ Any Comfort That I Can.

    via Takin’ Any Comfort That I Can.

  • Something Old, Something New – Something Special


    “I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I doubt I deserved my friends.”
    —— Walt Whitman

    Yesterday I visited with my favorite Aunt Lucille who lives in Beaumont which is ninety-nine miles east of Montgomery on Texas Highway 105. I always enjoy my visits with her. She’s got spunk, and contrary to Mr. Grant’s opinion of spunk on the Mary Tyler Moore show a gazillion years ago, I like spunk. She refuses to give up her independent living apartment in a retirement community that offers assisted living and other levels of care for which she would qualify. Instead, she keeps her mind active with crossword puzzles and word games in the daily newspaper, and her knowledge of current events acquired through the TV and conversations is as good as it gets. She pushes herself out of bed and showers and dresses and puts on makeup every day. My aunt will be ninety-three years old in May and has a list of ailments and a personal pharmacy to treat them. A recent setback makes movement even more difficult for her, but she has rebounded and makes a determined effort to rejoin her friends at their reserved dinner table downstairs almost every evening. It’s a long walk from her apartment on the third floor to the lobby of the next building for meals. Trust me.

    Yesterday she told me one of her friends was coming by in the afternoon for a visit. I recognized the name because she had talked about Jan for as long as I could remember. She told me Jan was recovering from a stroke and her caregiver would be bringing her by. When Jan arrived promptly at two o’clock, Lucille got up from the sofa in the living room and pushed her walker toward Jan’s. When they met in the middle of the room, they both smiled and hugged each other with genuine joy on their faces. After introductions all round, we sat down to talk.

    Lucille and Jan met in 1953 when they both lived with their husbands in an apartment complex in Beaumont. They first talked when they were outdoors hanging clothes on the clothesline behind their apartment building. Both women were new to Beaumont and Jan’s daughter was born in the spring before Lucille’s was born in October that year. They were new mothers and became new friends. Their husbands luckily liked each other, too, and the couples got together often. Lucy’s husband Jay died in 1979 and Jan and her husband Otis shared a sixty-fifth wedding anniversary before his recent death.

    What struck me as I listened to them talk about their families and what was going on in their lives now was how remarkable it must be to have a friendship that stretches across sixty years of change and challenges. Their bond survived everything life threw at them. Hot and cold seasons came and went for six decades, but their loyalty to each other never got too hot to go up in flames or too cold to freeze and wither away.

    In a separate happening this week I was reminded of friendships I’ve lost and the pain of losing them. We are a mobile society and our moving parts rarely stay in the same place for very long. We change our homes and jobs and the people in our lives that go with them. Sometimes we just change the people in our lives. Regardless, a true friendship for sixty years is worthy of a tribute and this is mine for Lucille and Jan.