I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Personal

  • Close Call


    I smelled something funny on Tuesday mid-afternoon when I walked downstairs to feed the dogs.  Not funny ha-ha, but funny as in odd, peculiar…a strange odor.  My first candidate for the culprit was the kitchen trash cans so I opened the lower cabinet door to have a sniff.  No, nothing in there with an unusual aroma.

    Maybe the garbage disposal?  I had emptied a small Tupperware container of overripe pineapple at noon but that shouldn’t smell bad, I thought, and it didn’t when I checked.

    After the dogs ate, we all went outside for an afternoon constitutional in the back yard.  We didn’t linger, though, because it was too hot.  The short walk aggravated my right knee aches and pains so I went back inside and up the stairs for a nap.  My best friend Red was glad for a rest so he and I curled up together on the king-sized bed and drifted off.  I felt Chelsea and Spike join us later on but didn’t bother to rise and pet them.  They were on their own.

    Teresa got home from work a couple of hours later and we made a parade going down the stairs to welcome her from her hard day of  work at the Mast General Store.  As soon as she walked through the door she said, “Something smells bad in here.  What’s going on?”

    She was right.  The slight odor from earlier in the day was now more pungent and pronounced.  Then we both began to search in earnest.  We looked in every kitchen cabinet and around the stove and refrigerator.  We looked under furniture in the den and in the laundry room around Spike’s crate.  Finally, with no luck, we decided we must have a dead animal somewhere under the house.  If the odor wasn’t better by tomorrow, we’d have to call someone to get rid of whatever had died.

    We went out to dinner and put Spike in his crate and left the doggie door open to the back yard for Red and Chelsea.

    Dinner was good, but I told Teresa my stomach had been slightly upset this afternoon for some unknown reason.  I decided to take food home for tomorrow instead of overeating that night which was always a possibility at Miyo’s when I could have Szechuan beef and spring rolls.

    When we came home afterwards, the odor had intensified and we again searched for its source.  Still no luck.  We were hooked on a Netflix series of a BBC production called Luther starring Idris Elba and watched an episode and then discussed why we would choose to watch a show with so much violence.  What did that say about us when we were morally opposed to violence? Then we veered off into why the British didn’t outlaw knives since that was apparently their weapon of choice in the midst of their ban on guns.

    I admitted to having a thing about Ruth Wilson who was the femme fatale in Luther.  Teresa said she loved Idris Elba in spite of everything we were morally opposed to – so there we were.  Around 10 o’clock we decided to take ourselves upstairs to bed.  That’s how we roll.

    By now we were used to the bad odor and had decided to think about it tomorrow – like Scarlett O’Hara at Tara when I went back into the kitchen to fix a Diet Coke to carry upstairs for my evening meds.

    As I opened the refrigerator, I glanced at the stove and saw that something wasn’t quite right.  One of the knobs for the stove top burners was slightly, ever so slightly, turned to the “on” position.  I closed the refrigerator door and walked over to take a look and smell.  In an instant I realized what was happening.  I turned the knob off and ran to open the back door.

    I yelled to Teresa and asked her to open all the windows and turn on the fans in every room.  I told her I would take the downstairs and she could get the upstairs.  I don’t think I’ve moved that fast in a long time.  We had the house open in record time, and the gas began to escape.

    We took the dogs outside, loaded them in the pickup and drove to a 24-hour Wal-Mart to buy a carbon monoxide alarm.  I’m still not sure why we felt the need to buy that for a natural gas leak in the house but we clearly weren’t thinking on all cylinders.  Nevertheless, when we came home with our new alarm, it was almost midnight and the odor was gone.

    I’ve wondered this week about what didn’t happen Tuesday night and why.  For example, I almost lit a scented candle while we were watching Luther –  but didn’t.  When we leave the house in the evening, we often let Spike roam downstairs with Red and Chelsea and shut the back doggie door – but this night we didn’t.   We could’ve stayed home and eaten leftovers and grown more accustomed to the noxious gas and gotten too sick to realize what was happening –  but we didn’t.

    It wasn’t your time.  You’ve got an angel on your shoulder.  Somebody up there likes you.  God isn’t finished with you yet. You must have more lives than a cat. You’ve got miles to go before you sleep.   Fill in your own blanks……….your guess is as good as mine.

    Let’s just say I’ll call it like I see it.  It was a close call, but we have a few seconds remaining on the clock.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Renaissance Woman: Maya Angelou


    I love women.  I truly do.  No offense, guys, because some of my best friends are men.  But when push comes to shove and choices have to be made about the company I keep, I’ll choose a woman.  Every time.

    One of my favorite women is Maya Angelou.  I treasure images of  book covers of her books I’ve read, images of the lines of her poetry and images of  her face and presence  on a television screen.   I revere an image of  her on a presidential dais at the inauguration ceremony of an American President.  Images of her with Civil Rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. leave an indelible mark on me because they are a reminder of her lifelong commitment to social justice issues and equal opportunities for all. Today when I heard she died at her home,  all those images flooded my mind.

    But what I will miss most about this woman is what I hear and not what I see. The rich, slow – almost ponderous – rhythms of her speech mesmerized me, and the deep rumbling voice was like the sound of my old Dodge Dakota pickup truck’s muffler when I start it first thing in the morning.  Music to my ears.

    In 1998 Maya Angelou spoke at the Second Annual Human Rights Campaign National Dinner and the HRC Blog today posted an excerpt from her speech that evening on the importance of gay people coming out of the closet.  I lifted an excerpt from the excerpt.

    You have no idea who you will inform because all of us are caged birds,

    have been and will be again.

    Caged by somebody else’s ignorance.

    Caged because of someone else’s small-mindedness.

    Caged because of someone else’s fear and hate…

    and sometimes caged by our own lack of courage.

    Maya Angelou was a woman with many gifts and abilities who had the courage to use them to lift us to higher ground and take us to a place we can all call home.  A Renaissance Woman, a legend in her own lifetime, a woman of substance – all these and more. I will miss her words and the voice that gave them life.

     

     

     

  • Memorial Day – Remembering Harvey Milk


    Today, May 22nd., would have been Harvey Milk’s 84th. birthday.  Instead, his life was tragically shortened by five bullets to his head in his office at San Francisco’s City Hall in 1978.  Harvey was one of the first openly gay elected LGBT officials in the entire USA when, on his third try, he was elected to the Board of Supervisors of San Francisco in 1977.  Eleven months later he was murdered by a former board colleague who believed the growing gay movement threatened traditional values.

    His life and death have served as an ongoing inspiration to the LGBTQ community in America and around the world.

     

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    Harvey Milk Postage Stamp Issue

    You’ve got to give them hope.  If a bullet should enter my brain,

    let that bullet destroy every closet door.

    On this day in 2014 Harvey Milk was honored by his country with the issuance of a forever postage stamp with his image and the colors that symbolize the movement.  Thirty-six years after his death the bullets to his brain destroyed many closet doors.

    When I bought 100 stamps this afternoon at the Post Office, the young woman said to me, You are the first person to buy these Harvey Milk stamps.  And I said, You don’t know how thrilled I am to have them.

    How appropriate on this coming Memorial Day  to remember an American hero who died for his hopes for equality and justice.

    Closet doors have opened at warp speed since Harvey’s time.  He would be amazed, as I am continually, that nineteen states and Washington, D.C. have legalized same-sex marriage.  The number of LGBTQ elected officials has grown exponentially at local, state and federal levels with the support of many organizations including The Victory Fund which has as its mission the appointment and election of members of our own community in order to take a seat at the tables of political power.

    Harvey Milk and others like him made possible an event that kicked closet doors open for hundreds of thousands of LGBTQ persons and underscored the perseverance of a community determined to make its mark on the country.  We would not go away.

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    Flag for March on Washington

    with two wrist bands and rings from the March

    (Memorabilia courtesy of Dick Hubbard and the late Freddie Mullis)

    On April 25, 1993 the largest march in the movement’s history was held in Washington, D.C., and the gays and lesbians came running out of their closets to participate.  You just had to be there to take it all in.  Wow.  We were inspired and empowered.  For many of us the closet doors would never be shut again – except from the outside.

    If you are a regular with me, you know my heroes have always been cowboys like  Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger, the Cisco Kid, Wyatt Earp.  These were my guys in white hats and they always righted some wrong or rescued a damsel in distress.  I have a long list of heroes I will remember this Memorial Day weekend, but today I salute Harvey Milk – an ordinary man who committed outrageous acts of courage in his everyday rebellions.

    I owe you.

  • WWF – Play On


    Since I’ve had a week of house arrest due to circumstances within my control but apparently without any interest in controlling them, I find my mind wandering.  My mind wanders at the drop of a hat anyway and unless I reel it in, it takes me down paths of intrigue and mystery that are too often dangerous.

    The past four years have been tumultuous and full of drastic changes that precipitated moving to and fro over great distances with such frequency I occasionally met myself coming while I was going.  Or at least it felt that way to me.  Here today, gone tomorrow.  Now I see me.  Now I don’t.  The rolling stone gathered no moss.  And so forth.

    Throughout these “transitional life experiences” one constant remained for me: my iPad and Words with Friends.  If there is any person in cyberspace who has never heard of this innocuous sounding game, please Google it immediately and get up to speed.  The rest of us will move on.

    My discovery of the game came from my partner Teresa who introduced me to WWF four years ago when I was under house arrest for a month for an ailment unrelated to the current one.  She gave me an iPad and told me that several of her tennis friends loved to play a little word game that was like Scrabble and that I should learn to play.   Sounds like something fun for you to do while you’re home, she told me.  I never argue with her about fun.

    The three tennis friends and I are still playing WWF four years later.  What I’ve found out since then is life goes on for all of us with changes everywhere, but we play on.  We may travel to exotic places, but we carry WWF with us.  We may have our first grandchildren who live a long way from us and we stay with them to help our children care for the new baby, but WWF gives us a connection to home.  Football seasons come and go and we live and breathe for our teams in Auburn, Clemson and Columbia – but we play WWF after the games no matter who wins or loses.  WWF transcends other loyalties.

    Cyberspace allows me to play WWF with opponents bouncing off satellites in other towns and states.  My friend in Charleston battles the everyday hardships of taking care of a mother who needs constant attention and affection, but she finds time to play WWF and beats me like a drum on a regular basis.  I have three other friends in Texas who play with me.  Their lives are busy and complicated, but they make time to make words every day.

    Recently I’ve added two new opponents who are locals – well, at least they’re local now.  They moved to Cayce two years ago from New York and love living in the South.  They also love WWF and so we meet on that battleground a minimum of once each day to determine who can outwit the other.

    In sickness and in health, for better or worse scores, I play on.  I prefer to win, but I’ve learned to lose.  Hm.  That’s kind of like life in general.

    Uh, oh.  Beep, Beep. Danger. Danger.  Time to reel it in.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • For Cindy from Little Man


    If time were not a moving thing

    And I could make it stay,

    This hour of love we share would always be…

    There’d be no coming day

    To shine a morning light

    To make us realize our night is over.

    It’s over.

    ——Jimmie Rodgers, 1966

    I lost a good friend today.  I lost a friend who greeted me with a smile and hug and kiss every time I saw her.  I lost a friend who had a quick wit and droll sense of humor and made me laugh whenever we were together which was, in the last few years, not often.

    She came into my life twelve years ago through her love of one of my oldest and dearest friends in Columbia: Millie Miller.  MM and I go way, way back to my first years in South Carolina in the 1970s.  We have seen the good, the bad and the ugly in each other’s lives and our friendship managed to survive.  That’s not easy these days.

    Cindy told great stories about her life before Millie and could entertain a living room full of people lucky enough to be eating one of her home-cooked New Year’s Day meals.  Black-eyed peas.  Collard greens.  Corn bread.  Fried chicken.  The girl could cook.

    From the first time I met her until the last time I saw her, she called me Little Man.  Hi Little Man, how you doing?  Hey Little Man, what you been up to?  Little Man, you need to come see us more.  We miss you.  I can truthfully say she is the only person on earth who ever called me by that name.  Why Little Man?  She would only say that I looked like a little man to her.  Enough said.

    Teresa’s favorite Cindy memory today was from a night a group of a dozen lesbians went to an Italian restaurant for someone’s birthday.  Neither of us could remember whose birthday it was, but both of us remembered Cindy’s hilarious performance of pretending to sing Happy Birthday in Italian at the top of her lungs with the waiters who really were singing in Italian and appeared totally undone by the woman who joined them.  Unforgettable moments.  Memory makers, as my mother used to say.

    Time is a moving thing and none of us can make it stay. The last few years were difficult ones for Cindy who faced many adversities in her life, but she never had to face them alone.  Millie was with her every step of the way.  Eventually, for all of us, the night is over, and we say goodbye to our favorite people.  Cindy Driggers was one of mine.