I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Personal

  • The In-Between Years

    The In-Between Years


    Through the good or lean years and for all the in-between years is a line from a Frank Sinatra classic All The Way.   As I lay 2012 to rest for a final countdown before the ball drops in Times Square in New York City tonight, I ask myself to rate the year as good, lean or in-between.   Understand this is a subjective, biased, prejudiced and totally personal evaluation.  It meets none of the standards for any Academy of Anything and as such, is not subject to review by a replay official.   I’m not sure if the year passed as quickly for you as it did for me, but I confess mine seemed to pass faster than a falling star so I hope you have a notated calendar to refresh your memories as mine does for me.

    The first day of 2012 I was in Texas and spent New Year’s Day with my mother who lived in a personal care residence with two other older women and the two wonderful sisters who cared for all of them.  She was in the severe stage of her dementia and, although I had no way of knowing it on that day, she wouldn’t survive the year and neither would the other two women who shared the home and enjoyed my New Year’s visit.  I’ve always loved women of any age and these were some of the most entertaining ever.  It was a good start to the new year.

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    Mom

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    Miss Ann

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    Miss Virginia

    Whenever I’m in Texas I always have great visits with my favorite Aunt Lucille who lives in Beaumont, one of my least favorite Texas towns.  My aunt will be ninety-three years old in 2013 and is an avid reader and crossword puzzle aficionado.  She lives now in an independent living apartment in a retirement community in Beaumont.  The nearness of neighbors and a standing dinner group of six women from her building in the late afternoon for dinner suit her social nature and need to be out and about.  Movies?  Politics?  TV shows?  Books?  Ask my aunt about any of these and she’s in her element with an attitude toward life that says Hey take your best shot at me, but I’m hangin’ in for as long as I can.  In 2012 I saw her more than a dozen times which was more than I’d visited her in one year…ever.  Each visit lifted my spirits and was just plain fun.

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    My favorite Aunt Lucille

    The year confirmed my status as a bi-stateual with extended periods of time in Texas and South Carolina and keeping the roads hot from here to there and back.  My partner Teresa traveled with me whenever she could get away from her job and I managed to coerce other friends to make the trip when she couldn’t go with me and refused to let me drive by myself any more.  Even with my “new” eyes from a second cataract surgery in July, my truck bears the dents and dings of my parking misadventures and alas, let’s face it.  I have a GPS but occasionally disagree with it and then I find I am not there when I need me.  I am somewhere else.

    Teresa and I did some fun trips during 2012.  At the end of February, which is our anniversary month, we drove to Valle Crucis, North Carolina, in the Blue Ridge Mountains for a couple of days of work and play.  She worked.  I played.

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    Blue Ridge Mountains, Boone, North Carolina

    Six months later in August we had a family vacation with our son Drew and his girlfriend Caroline.  We drove to the northeast to sightsee and spend time together and try to re-group from the losses earlier in the year.  Abraham Lincoln blessed us in Gettysburg and we traveled safely to the shores of Maine and along the coast in Rhode Island and saw beautiful scenery in Pennsylvania and Connecticut.  Boston was a hit for many reasons not the least of which was its good food.  We counted on Caroline to make sure we ate at the best restaurants according to her online guides.  Iphones were in, and Teresa and Drew had dueling GPSs that didn’t always want to go in the same direction.  So many gadgets…so much confusion.  So much merriment.

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    On my birthday in April I was at the funeral of the woman I knew as a second mother for over forty-five years.  She and my mom were as close as sisters and they were both heartbroken when I had to separate them four years ago because they could no longer take care of each other.  Willie Flora was eighty-two in March of this past year and my mom was eighty-five that same month.  Willie died on April 14th in Richmond, Texas and my mom died eleven days later in Willis.  It was sorrow upon sorrow.

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    Willie

    In September my neighbor Heather and I had a shower for another neighbor, Becky, who created additional excitement by announcing that her water broke a couple of hours before the shower was to start.   High drama, but we moved the time up, she came and opened her gifts, had a piece of cake and was then whisked away by her husband Gary to the hospital where she gave birth to her third baby boy four hours later.  George is growing by leaps and bounds and should be a fine nuisance for his older brothers Oscar and Dwight.

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    Dwight plus Oscar plus cookie jar = Good Times

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    George in his New Baby phase

    In November my third book was published and I was thrilled with how it looked when it came from the printer.  I loved the covers and had a sense of accomplishment as I placed it in my office next to my first two books.  I hope my cyberspace friends will want to read the final version since you’ve shared a number of the stories with me in the past year right here on this blog.  There is freedom in growing older and a sense of entitlement to Call It Like You See It — and even sweeter to see what you’re calling in print

    Good year?  Lean year?  In-between year?  The votes have been tallied by an unreliable CPA (me) and I have to report the in-between has it.  Births and deaths mark our beginnings and our endings, but the middle is what keeps our attention.  I’ll lay 2012 down tonight and pick up 2013.  I can’t predict what will happen in the New Year, but I can predict I will struggle to stay awake to ring it in.

    Teresa and I wish all of you a Happy and Healthy New Year!  Thanks for stopping by…

  • 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.

  • Reading at Harriet Hancock Community Center


    Hey, what a great time Teresa and I had doing a reading and book signing for I’ll Call It Like I See It: A Lesbian Speaks Out on Sunday, December 2nd!  Had  a wonderful group of GLBT folks who laughed at the appropriate moments so always a good sign…wish all of our cyberspace friends from around the country and world could’ve been with us!

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    The Center has a Potluck luncheon the first Sunday of every month

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    It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon so we ate and talked outside

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    No need to bring flowers – beautiful ones already there

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    Book signing table with book posters for all three books

    Thanks to Harriet Hancock and her daughter Jennifer Tague and Lester Frantzen for inviting us and making us feel so welcome and thanks to all who purchased books!

    I’d love to come to your home for a house party or your book club or other venues for speaking and book signings…please send me an email at smortex@aol.com.

  • Reading at Harriet Hancock GLBT Community Center Sunday, Dec 2nd


    Following the monthly Pot Luck at the Harriet Hancock Community Center in Columbia this Sunday, December 2nd., I’ll be doing a reading/discussion of the new book and signing copies sold afterwards.   The meal is at 2:00 and the reading will start at approximately 3:00.   Would love to see you there!

    The Community Center is located at 1108 Woodrow Street in Columbia, SC 29205.

  • New Book Launch!


    Holy Moly – First Editions/Collectibles/Autographed/Ticket to Ride!!  Be the First Followers to Buy Now!!

    I’ll Call It Like I See It – A Lesbian Speaks Out is a collection of personal stories and reflections on the challenging contemporary issues of the 21st century as told by a lesbian activist with a Southern accent. Rich with the mixture of wit and wisdom that is the tradition of Texas women storytellers, no stone goes unturned. From faith to football to finance to fantasy and everything in-between – the topics are as diverse as the author’s background. Readers of Sheila’s two previously published memoirs will recognize the outspoken voice of a storyteller who is unafraid to tackle taboo topics but does so with humor and compassion.

    Sheila Morris was born and raised in rural Grimes County, Texas but called South Carolina her home for over forty years.   She is the author of two award-winning memoirs, Deep in the Heart – A Memoir of Love and Longing and Not Quite the Same.  She is an essayist with humorist tendencies and believes she inherited her storytelling abilities from her grandmother on her daddy’s side.