I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Personal

  • All Aboard the Summer of Coco Express Unlimited!

    All Aboard the Summer of Coco Express Unlimited!


    Coco Gauff is now the youngest American to win the US Open since Serena Williams in 1999 and the fourth teenage American in the Open era to win the home Slam. And she did so on the anniversary of both Arthur Ashe’s breakthrough US Open victory in 1968 and Venus Williams‘ maiden title at the event in 2000. (D’Arcy Maine, ESPN.com)

    Gauff won her final on the Arthur Ashe Stadium Court of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, the same court where she watched Venus and Serena Williams play ten years earlier in 2013 at the age of nine when her father took her to see her first US Open tennis tournament. The Williams sisters inspired a new generation of American tennis players for more than two decades – their legacy will be as powerful as their play was on the Ashe Stadium Court.

    Serena won her fifth US Open women’s singles championship in 2013

    Pretty and I watched Coco overcome losing the first set of the championship match to Aryna Sabalenka who will be the number 1 player in the world tomorrow when the rankings come out by winning the next two sets with power, placement, and perseverance. When I finally could breathe, I told Pretty I was thankful to have lived long enough to witness a new generation of American tennis players who have the potential to fulfill the legacy the Williams sisters created.

    Coco wins her first US Open title in 2023

    When Gauff was handed her $3 million check during the presentation, she turned to find tennis legend and social justice activist King standing a few feet away from her on the podium and said thank you Billie, for fighting for this.

    Congratulations to Coco Gauff not only for her incredible victory on the courts but also for her remarkable understanding of what this victory will mean off the courts as well. I believe the Summer of Coco Express in 2023 is unlimited.

  • soups, broths, jellies and Jell-o (from Deep in the Heart)

    soups, broths, jellies and Jell-o (from Deep in the Heart)


    “You’ll have to keep the room as dark as possible. Put sheets over these windows to keep the light out,” Dr. Sanders instructed Mama. “She should eat soups, broths, jellies and Jell-o. That’s all. She can’t strain her eyes, so no books to look at, and no excitement of any kind. I’ll come back again in a few days to see how she’s getting along. It’s just a bad case of the measles, so don’t worry. They’re going around this winter, and she was bound to catch them.”

    “How long will she be sick?” Mama asked.

    “Depends on how bad a case she has. Sometimes they miss two weeks of school. We’ll have to see. Sheila Rae’s only seven, and the young ones seem to get better quicker. The penicillin shot should help.”

    With that bit of cheeriness old Dr. Sanders got heavily to his feet and picked up his black bag. He was a large man with a balding head of white hair that was typically covered by a small brown weather-beaten hat. He peered over rimless glasses that teetered precariously on a nose that appeared lost between his rotund cheeks. He reminded me of Santa Claus in a frayed black suit instead of a shiny red one.

    That’s why I always liked him right up until he gave me the penicillin shot, which appeared to be his cure for everything including measles. He was cheery, but not above inflicting pain on defenseless children. And in their own house, too. Not fair.

    *****************

    My mother always followed the doctor’s orders which included his dietary recommendations for every illness as faithfully as the shot of penicillin he carried in his black bag. This past week I developed a bad case of the epizooti which is my medical term for illnesses I “catch” from Pretty’s allergies. I remembered the dietary advice Dr. Sanders gave when I was sick with any childhood malady so I thought I would follow it seven decades later. Forgive me for skipping the soups, broths and Jell-o recommendations to go straight for the jellies. The Shipt shopper must have wondered why I needed three kinds of preserves: grape, strawberry and apricot. Yummy. The apricot on two pieces of toast for breakfast this morning made me feel better already.

    As for the doctor’s “no excitement of any kind” advice, too little too late. The US Open men’s semi-finals in singles were this weekend, and the women’s final is this afternoon. Coco Gauff is my pick to win it all, but Aryna Sabalenka is a tall order for the nineteen year old Gauff who is the first American teenager to be in a final at the US Open since, wait for it, Serena Williams in 2001. Go, Coco!

  • when the name of the game is life

    when the name of the game is life


    Whether the surface is a hard one or made of red clay or manicured green grass, the goal is the same: to win, to beat someone. To play better, smarter and mentally tougher than the opponent. To be more physical and aggressive. To charge the net when an opening appears. To cover the baseline when the shots go deep against you. The court is a battlefield and the scales of justice are often tipped by net cords and fractions of inches along white lines. The game is tennis, but the game of life is similar.

    How often must we summon courage to charge the net when an opening appears – when the scales of justice have tipped too far in the direction of injustice, when we stand behind the baseline for protection from the deep shots fired against us by people whose purpose is to disrupt our rhythm, to create confusion in our understanding of what matters most. Yes, the game is life, but the game of tennis is similar.

    For men who play singles, the winner is usually required to win two of three sets. In Grand Slam events, however, the rules change to three of five sets to determine the champion. If each man wins two sets, a fifth set is played. The fifth set is often the scene of one man’s surrender and loss to another man’s courage and inner strength. The first four sets are evenly played, but the last one is too much for the body or mind or will or all of the above for one of the guys and the desire to win or to not lose drives his opponent to victory. When the game is life, time controls how many sets we play. For some, the opportunities to play five sets never happen because winners and losers are determined at the end of three or four sets or earlier when players are forced to retire because of illness or injury.

    I love fifth sets in tennis. I particularly like them when they are close and long, and I’m not even paying for my seat in front of the television set. Nope, I’m watching for free, but I have the deluxe box seats and have seen my share of Grand Slams in Melbourne, Paris, London and New York City. From my ABCs of Agassi to Becker to Connors to later Golden Era Greats Federer and Nadal I admire the passion and persistence of the five-set winners. There is a moment of high drama called match point when the difference between winning and losing in the fifth set can be measured in split-second choices and breaks in concentration. Match points can be saved and the game can go on for hours, but in the end, a match point is lost and the winner takes center court with a victorious smile and wave to the crowd.

    Whenever I watch a five-set tennis match, I am reminded that match points in tennis have an advantage over those we have in real life. Jannik Sinner and Alexander Zverev understood the importance of the fifth set and its match point last night at the US Open in New York City. Their embrace at the net following the match showed their separate reactions to winning and losing match point, but we as individuals may never know when we miss the chance to win –  or lose what we value most. Moving through the game of life we often struggle to identify those inflection points that will profoundly define our fifth set’s legacy, but maybe, just maybe, we will recognize one more opportunity to charge the net with courage, to leave the safety of the baseline to protect what we must not lose.

  • Labor Day 2023

    Labor Day 2023


    What glorious weather! What a fun time with family and friends!

    Molly looks for her favorite person from the screen porch – Ella? Ella?

    Ella plays with her pool peeps Saskia and Finn

    Nana directs fun at our pool party

    I asked Nana why this pool towel has so many holes?

    Nana said it was very old, but it was her favorite towel

    I wonder if that’s why she keeps Naynay, too?

    **********************

    Happy Labor Day from our family to yours!

    ,

  • the secret life v. the happy homosexual

    the secret life v. the happy homosexual


     KA: Can you give me an example of what you mean by secret life? What was the public persona versus…was it what you were feeling inside, or what you were doing?

    SM: Okay. No. It was… I was a high achiever. I wanted to succeed in everything, and I’m not sure what was the motivation for that. My parents really didn’t pressure me into that, but being the only child of school teachers…maybe there was some, I don’t know. But regardless, I wanted to be at the top of my class. I wanted to be…if I did athletics, I wanted to be the best. I mean, I was very motivated, and I always felt that that person who was doing all that, if anybody knew that deep down, that I liked little girls and that I wasn’t really interested in boys, and pretended to be…

    You know I dated in high school, college. I’ve dated guys. That was ridiculous. But it was important to keep the secret life, the secret. Yeah. I mean, it impacted everything. I started reading about—when I was a child obviously I couldn’t really understand the totality of my feelings about girls, but then when I got to where I could read and went to high school and all, then I started reading stuff about being a homosexual. What does that mean, really, being a lesbian?

    KA: What kind of stuff did you find?

    SM: Well I found the kind of stuff that I mentioned, that it was illegal, that it was an illness, that it was…you were somehow wrong. Not just from an ethical, moral standpoint, but you were just wrong in general. There was something off. You just weren’t quite there. And so, contrast that with the overachiever over here who was busy, busy, busy making top grades and all that, with the fear that over here, “Oh my god. They’re going to find out and then they’re going to want to do something horrible.” And that was the literature. I mean that was the literature of the ‘50s. And even the ‘60s, was that this was an illness, a sickness, a sin. I mean, it was awful. That was how you were. That was you.

    KA: Was there anything positive? Did you ever find anything that was positive?

    SM: Well, the seminal event that changed my life, I will tell you this. There was—of course what would I study when I went to the University of Texas in 1964? Abnormal psychology, because that was what I was really interested in. It wasn’t a major. I majored in accounting because the successful person had to make a lot of money, okay? But the secret person over here had an elective in abnormal psychology.

    I mean, you have to know that back then—I don’t know what they do now—but back then at the University of Texas, the lecture halls, there were 500 students in a class. I mean, we’d sit in these huge auditoriums. There were more students in my classes than lived in my entire town of Richards. You know what I mean?

    I mean, counting dogs and chickens, and everybody. So I had this professor in that abnormal psychology class, and he had a different lecture every time, obviously. But one day he said, “Well, today we’re going to talk about homosexuality.” Well I thought, “Finally, I mean this is why I took this class, and now he’s going to get to it.” And so, his name was Dr. Holmes, and he was a young guy. I remember he had a crew cut, and nice-looking guy. But anyway. He was walking around, and he was talking to us, and he said, “One thing I do, other than teach, is I’m a counselor. I’m a psychologist. I have patients. Clients.” And so he said, “I have a question for the class today. What do I say to the happy homosexual?” That changed my life. Because the idea that there could be a happy homosexual was contrary to everything that I had ever felt, ever thought, ever read.

    And there’s a man standing up there saying, “Homosexuals can be happy.” So it changed my vision and my life because then I could see the potential. It opened up a whole new…it still didn’t change me from being a secret. I wasn’t going to tell anybody I was a homosexual yet. I was still very closeted. But it changed the horizon, I guess, that I had for my life. Yeah. So that was the positive thing that turned my life in a different direction.

    ****************

    On June 21, 2021 I was interviewed by Katherine Allen (KA) for the LGBTQ Columbia History Initiative, led by Historic Columbia that was documenting “the often unseen and untold stories of this diverse community through a comprehensive resource of oral histories, archival collections and historic site interpretation.” The entire interview can be found here:
    https://digital.library.sc.edu/exhibits/LGBTQ-Columbia/interviews/sheila-morris/

    Sheila Morris was born in Navasota, Texas in 1946, and grew up in the small town of Richards. Her parents were educators. Interview includes discussion of Sheila’s childhood, how religion and psychology impacted her perspectives on homosexuality as she grew up, her experiences at the University of Texas, discrimination she encountered as a woman in the accounting profession, her life in Seattle, Washington, and her move to Columbia in the early 1970s. Morris reflected on her relationships with closeted and out women, shared memories of the gay bars in Columbia in the 1970s and 1980s, and discussed her role in cofounding the South Carolina Gay and Lesbian Business Guild in the early 1990s. Morris was also a member of a number of other organizations in Columbia including Palmetto AIDS Life Support Services, the National Organization for Women, Women on Boards and Commissions, and Planned Parenthood. During the interview, Morris read excerpts from her memoir Deep in the Heart and discussed the publication of Southern Perspectives on the Queer Movement: Committed to Home, a collection of essays.