I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Personal

  • Gamecock women went to Duke – and so did we

    Gamecock women went to Duke – and so did we


    thanks to Gamecock Jennifer for great seats behind our bench at Duke game

    Duke took early lead, but Gamecock women finished with 77-61 win

    Pretty and I have made the 3 1/2 hour road trip from Columbia, South Carolina to Durham, North Carolina three times in the past eight years to watch our Gamecock women’s basketball team play the Duke University Blue Devils. The trip this year was unique with a new traveler on board: 23 month old granddaughter Molly. While older sister Ella performed in The Nutcracker ballet in Columbia this weekend, Molly had a number of firsts with us starting with our first road trip together.

    Molly’s mom Caroline always has her hair and clothes fixed so cute

    another first for Molly was staying in a motel room with her Nana and Naynay

    (she found Naynay’s Crocs next to bed and took off like a herd of turtles)

    Pretty and Molly outside Cameron Indoor Stadium at Duke University on Game Day, Molly’s first basketball game

    Molly happiest when looking at pictures of Ella

    Our personal record with the Gamecock women is now 2-1 at Duke (yes, we were there for the loss in 2016), but while the first two games we saw at Cameron were exciting, this third game in Durham was a winner not only because we won a basketball game but also because we shared a memory maker experience with two North Carolina friends who are ardent Gamecock fans as well as our first attempt to indoctrinate a new little Gamecock fan who now shouts “Cocks” whenever the people around her shout “Game.” Sigh. If only we could have had a different mascot.

    Gamecock women’s basketball won at Duke – and so did we. Go Cocks!

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    Slava Ukraini. For all children everywhere.

  • a man of letters – season 2 – episode 2

    a man of letters – season 2 – episode 2


    My dad’s mother, Betha Day Robinson Morris, was born October 23, 1903. In October of 1964 my thirty-nine-year-old father wrote a birthday letter to his mother who lived in Richards, Texas (eighty miles north of where he lived in Richmond, Texas). I call this one of my daddy’s deep in the heart moments – I can picture my grandmother’s tears when she read this from her youngest of three grown children. She was the one who treasured the words he wrote; I found this letter after her death in 1983.

    My personal favorite line in this letter is “You know when you have people who believe in you, you hate to let them down.”

    Daddy and Mama were thrilled about getting their first home together in 1964. They had eloped in 1945 when he returned from England at the end of WWII; I was born in 1946 ten months later. We lived in Richards with my maternal grandmother in her home that was less than a minute walk from my dad’s parents until I was thirteen years old. When my parents and I moved away from Richards, we lived in rental houses in Brazoria, Texas for five years. They moved to another rental house in Richmond when I left for college; Daddy and Mama got jobs in the school district there.

    The American dream was alive and well in the fall of 1964.

    Daddy and my grandmother at the back steps of her home circa 1943

    Does anyone have a favorite line in the letter?

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    Slava Ukraini. For the children.

  • a man of letters – season 2 – episode 1

    a man of letters – season 2 – episode 1


    My father’s letters continued after his marriage to my mother, and later he wrote to me when I was in college in the 1960s. I look forward to another series on those entertaining letters, but for now I will leave my family as they were at the end of World War II. (July 01, 2018 – season 1 – episode 11)

    In June, 2018 I published a series of letters in this blog that my father wrote to my mother who was the hometown girl he left behind as well as letters to other family members during WWII. I did plan to do another series that summer five years ago on letters he wrote to me when I was in college at the University of Texas in Austin from 1964 – 1967 but found I suffered from burnout, emotional exhaustion, or the devil made me give up. My dad was my best friend from the time I was born in 1946 until his death from colon cancer in 1976 at fifty-one years of age. He had beautiful handwriting I didn’t inherit and a beautiful mind, too. Here’s a sample of both.

    My daddy always loved poetry and music so when he gave me these words at Christmas my senior year in high school, I wasn’t surprised. I don’t remember if he mentioned they were part of the lyrics from a song called A Letter from Santa written by Mickey Maguire (more remembered for Christmas classic I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus). I do remember I laughed out loud. I probably also couldn’t believe my dad had actually written the word “ass” in something he gave me – my parents refused to use what they considered to be vulgar language; I’m sure “ass” was a hard no. Maybe this rite of passage made it funnier to me. Regardless, I’ll start the new series on a seasonal note.

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    Slava Ukraini. For the children everywhere.

  • the truth tellers

    the truth tellers


    At a press conference following her loss in the finals at Wimbledon in 2019, Serena Williams was questioned about why she lost. Although she tried to say her opponent played a brilliant match, the members of the press wouldn’t let it go. They asked her if she thought her lack of match play during the year had hurt her, whether her role as a mother took too much time away from her tennis, and finally someone said they wondered if she spent too much time supporting equal rights or other political issues. Serena’s quick response to that question was “The day I stop supporting equality is the day I die.”

    I can identify with her answer because I believe my actions to support equality and social justice are two of the dominant forces of my life, but alas, I lack the tennis skills that give Serena Williams a universally recognized platform. Writing has been my platform for supporting equal rights during the past seventeen years; it has been the curtain call for the third act of my life – my love affair with words: collecting, rearranging, caressing them to make sense of an ever-changing world. Flannery O’Connor said I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I write. I get that because I can start with a feeling, but sometimes my thoughts trail along behind my words that come from a mysterious place yet to be revealed.

    This poster given to me by my friend Linda many years ago hangs in my office today with words from author Anne Lamott to writers about why they write. “It is as if the right words, the true words, are already inside of them, and they just want to help them get out.” The true words I release, however, are not necessarily everyone’s truth. I have learned over the years that truth is not an absolute for every person but rather a fluid concept capable of manipulating minds at odds with what I believe truth to be. For example, remember Kelly Anne Conway’s remarkable explanation of “alternative facts.” Those two words took America on a roller coast ride of a reality show called Believe It or Not DC Style for the past eight years, and unbelievably created a deep wedge that pit family members, friends, co-workers, even institutions against each other with no sign of relief in next year’s political environment.

    Truth telling may be a lost art, truth tellers may bend with the winds, but fundamental values of equality and social justice must not be either lost or warped. As Serena said, the day I stop supporting equality is the day I die.

    And I ain’t ready to go yet. Onward.

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    For the children.