by sheila morris
Our guns are locked and loaded,
Full of fury and fire.
Our hopes of peace outmoded
By men with war desire.
Who speaks for those enraged
By words so full of hate?
We must – we must become engaged
Before it is too late.
Too late to hear the cries
From half a world away.
And yet we share the very same skies
That weep for us today.
The cover of my third book features a family snapshot of my favorite Aunt Lucille who was my daddy’s sister, her daughter Melissa, my mother and daddy, and me.
I am the child fiddling with my gloves and not looking at the picture-taker, whoever that might be. Probably my Uncle Jay who was my Aunt Lucille’s husband and my first cousin Melissa’s father. He liked to take pictures and had the most impressive camera of anyone in our family so naturally he was the photographer for important occasions like Easter Sunday.
I was ten years old at the time of the photo, and I’m assuming it was a picture taken right before we went to church for an Easter service at the Richards Baptist Church in Richards, Texas the little town in Grimes County at the edge of the piney woods. Population 500 counting dogs and chickens.
My mother looked happy – no doubt because she managed to dress me in a ruffled dress, Easter bonnet and, reluctantly, white gloves. My daddy is the one with the crew cut, which I’m sure I secretly envied.
My Aunt Lucille is the beautiful woman wearing an appropriate corsage with her Easter outfit that included gloves, handbag and hat. Melissa was probably two years old and apparently not too thrilled with either her Easter outfit, the photographer’s efforts, or a combination of irritations as we prepared to go to church that day. She’s the pretty little girl with the frown.
I love this picture – and I love the people in it.
Time, distance and the vicissitudes of life, as my daddy used to say, make it difficult to keep in touch with my cousin Melissa who is the only one remaining in this picture besides me. She lives in San Leon, Texas with her husband Tim and their three dogs. San Leon is a small town on Galveston Bay past Houston if you’re driving south toward the Gulf of Mexico and the Galveston beaches. Regardless of where you’re driving, Melissa and Tim live a thousand miles from Pretty and me in South Carolina.
But today she was in Charleston with Tim who was there on a work assignment and we had made plans to get together. Pretty wanted to take me, but she was still in the business of the final push to clear out Casa de Canterbury since the new owners brought a big ol’ moving van up to the porch today and started unloading. That’s a convoluted story for another day but needless to say, Pretty was overwhelmed with no opportunity to drive me to Charleston at this point in our lives.
In (and up) stepped my good friend Dick Hubbard who happily agreed to drive me to see my cousin Melissa for an early lunch at her hotel today. Bless his heart. Dick and I have been friends for 30 years but usually meet for lunch in Columbia so we enjoyed the extra time to visit on the two-hour ride down to Charleston and back. Gossip, the meaning of life, his husband Curtis, my wife Pretty, pickup trucks were a few of our topics as we drove in a slight drizzle…just enough to require his new windshield wipers every once in a while.
The visit with Melissa was perfect. We caught up on two years’ worth of current events in our lives since we last saw each other in Texas in the summer of 2015. We talked politics, books, retirement, what Tim was doing, how Pretty was doing – but mostly we talked about the other three people in the book cover picture who are no longer here and how much we both miss them.
Melissa and I share the solitude of being “only children” and what that means when we have lost our parents and grandparents. Neither of us has children of our own – Melissa’s daughter died many years ago of cystic fibrosis.
But today was a joyful day because we could talk together about the people we both knew and loved when we were growing up: we are each other’s people after all. Sixty-five years of family history are ties that will always bind us, regardless of the years between visits or the distance of a thousand miles that separate us today. Thank goodness for facebook.
Both of us actually knew the people we were talking about; and that’s a happy thing, as Melissa likes to say.
This was an extra special Tuesday for me, a day I won’t forget anytime soon…until we meet again.
Melissa and her playhouse in Beaumont, Texas
I will sail my vessel ‘til the river runs dry.
Like a bird upon the wind, these waters are my sky.
I’ll never reach my destination if I never try,
So I will sail my vessel ‘til the river runs dry.
Garth Brooks’s lyrics sing a song of determination that begins with his all-important first step of getting into the boat with a sense of purpose and working as hard as he can to keep the vessel from tipping over in heavy winds.
Whether our rivers are real or imaginary, it is sometimes difficult to keep sailing our vessels in the right direction to achieve the long-term results we strive for as individuals, as families – and even as a nation.
Carl Bernstein (of Bernstein and Woodward in the Nixon years) says we Americans live today in the midst of a cold civil war. Garth Brooks might say that sailing our vessel of democracy has gotten much more difficult as heavy winds blow against it with more suspicions of each other in every news cycle.
Discernment of truth is ridiculed. Harsh rhetoric – whether true or not – is applauded and considered to be shaking things up that should have been shaken up a long time ago in Washington. Our vessel of democracy tilts too far leeward or too far windward with politics to the left or right that create schisms which have become as wide as the Grand Canyon.
Earth to America: your vessel is in trouble and in danger of sinking.
The passion we feel to protect and preserve our families must be the same passion we feel to protect and preserve our democratic ideals. A small wind of individual apathy toward basic civic responsibilities such as voting can become a hurricane force when it is multiplied by millions who have lost faith in their institutions and the people who are in charge of them.
All of us are in the same boat with the same basic needs for clean air to breathe, food to eat, pure water to drink, affordable popcorn at the movies…well, maybe popcorn is a bridge too far…
We must each do our part to ensure the waters of kindness, compassion, respect for our differences, celebration of our shared humanity – like birds upon the wind, these waters are our skies and we will sail our vessels as individuals, as families and as a nation ’til the river runs dry.
This is a special post for our friends who live very far away from us in New York. They have lost a precious member of their family, an adorable little dog named Butterfly, this weekend. She succumbed to many health issues and passed away in her mother’s arms.
If we lived close to them, we would be at their home tonight to mourn with them as they sit shiva – we would be bringing them a bite to eat and a treat for Butterfly’s sister Cricket who is the inspiration for The Cricket Pages, the blog that introduced us to their family.
Every weekend I looked forward to Rachel’s posts that always included Cricket and Butterfly’s antics – sometimes funny, sometimes more serious – but always entertaining.
I will miss Butterfly from now on. I hope she and The Red Man get to meet somewhere and swap stories.
May God comfort you among the other mourners of Zion and Jerusalem and may you have no more sorrow.
On May 29, 1945 my mom Selma and my dad Glenn eloped to get married by a justice of the peace in Magnolia, Texas. Magnolia was a small town 30 miles south of the even smaller town of Richards where they had grown up and gone to public school together. I’m not sure how they decided on Magnolia unless they had set out for Houston which was another 60 miles down the road – and couldn’t wait.
They eloped practically the day my father returned from England after flying 32 bombing missions over Germany as a navigator on a B-25 bomber. He had volunteered to enlist in the army soon after graduating from high school, gone to officer training school in the Army Air Corps, served in the 8th Air Force in England, received the Air Medal of Honor, was honorably discharged, came home to the rural Grimes County, Texas home he had left and married the woman he loved. She was 18 – he was 21.
My father had a brother, Ray, who was two years older than he was. My Uncle Ray also enlisted in the Army as soon as he finished high school. Even though the brothers had been separated for two years, they both were amazed to find themselves stationed together with the 8th Air Force in England. Ray loaded the bombs in the planes on the ground, and Glenn dropped the bombs from the air.
Ray and Glenn’s mother, my grandmother Betha Day Robinson Morris, kept this letter dated August 16, 1945 from a mother written to her from another mother in Doncaster, England. Apparently Betha’s sons had spent quite a bit of time in her home while they were stationed across the Pond during the war. Glenn was home and already married before Ray’s tour was over.
16 -8 – 45
Dear Mrs. Morris,
Many thanks for your letter. I was very pleased you appreciated my letter. I expect you have Ray home now. We do miss him but let’s thank god the whole war is over & our boys won’t have to face that Pacific. I dreaded hearing that any of the U.S.A. boys who stayed with me would have to face that ordeal. Fancy Glynn being with you when my letter arrived. I could just imagine him saying that about the Yorkshire pudding. Yes Mrs. Morris my dear son arrived home safely & we’ve had a lovely 10 days with him. We had his coming home party last Saturday & what a party. Ray will tell you what a lively house this is like your own. I didn’t know what to do when the telegram came saying he had landed in England. I laughed & cried together so I know your feelings when that great big son of yours arrives. He’s a great guy. We’ve got his photo on the piano. I often talk to him. Pleased to hear you have 3 children. We only have 2 boys and my grandson who really is a beautiful child. I’ll send you some snaps when we can obtain some films for the camera. He’s so proud of his dear daddy. Ask Glynn to send me a picture of his wife. She sounds a jolly good sort of a girl. We get very few American Boys here now. I see a few was over for J.V. Days & everybody went mad. Tell Ray the Market Tavern was crowded. When we got in, you couldn’t get out again. My son who works there was tired out. What beer they sold & we was all dancing in the Market too. Give Ray this message from Shelia “She sends her regards to him & if she wasn’t marrying Nash, he stood the second chance.” She’s a sweet kid. I’ll enclose you the recipe for Yorkshire pudding it’s really good. With roast, beef, mutton, or pork. We very seldom have a dinner without in England. As it’s very tasty with onions cooked. Let’s hope you make a success of it. It needs a lot of Beeting (sp.) up. Well dear space is short and time marches on. Give my love to my two Boys from their Limey Mum.
So I’ll say cheerio.
Sincerely yours
E.Hughes
Regards from all the young at heart to Ray & Glynn
Sender’s name and address: E. Hughes, L.L. Christ Church Rd, Doncaster, England.
P.S. I can only imagine my grandmother’s strictly tee-totaling Southern Baptist self as she read the part about the Market Tavern, beer and dancing. Oh my god.
P.S.P.S. Family lore always attributed my name Sheila to a girl in England. There is truth to that story apparently. My middle name Rae was my daddy’s attempt to feminize his brother’s name. So I guess I might have been named Betha Day instead of Sheila Rae had it not been for WWII.
Cheerio
I'll Call It Like I See It 
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