I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Reflections

  • Back to the Basics: Seinfeld, Hot Dog Baskets and Yushino


    Time to focus on the basics once again following the gut-wrenching defeat that was Election Day at Casa de Canterbury. Pretty and I stayed up until 3 o’clock this morning to watch the results by ourselves after our last two survivors from the disastrous Victory Party gave up a little after midnight. The small gathering got off to a rollicking start around 7 p.m. as the smiley Rachel Maddow and Brian Williams practically glowed with excitement and anticipation of the final Glass Ceiling having a big old crack in it. Just like the media, our friends came in with Victory on their minds. 

    We had tons of food and drink and dessert was a wonderful cake decorated with pink roses. “Girl Power” was what I asked the cake decorator to write in pink on the white icing across the top – and thought how clever I was. Pretty insisted we couldn’t cut the cake until Hillary Clinton won, and we all said that was fine. Plenty of other things to eat.

    Our friends Nekki and Francie brought a gigantic bottle of champagne which we kept chilled in the refrigerator to drink when we sliced the cake. Plenty of other things to drink.

    The American political process was in full display unfolding before our eyes.

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    As the evening wore on, Rachel and Brian’s expressions began to shift from joyful to puzzled to we can’t believe what we’re seeing to shit house mouse. And our little group watched as the Democratic Party defied the pollsters and pundits and were able to snatch Defeat from the jaws of Victory in this the 2016 Presidential Election Year.

    About midway to midnight, I asked Pretty if we could go ahead and cut the cake, but Pretty said absolutely not. Things would turn around soon. Everyone else nodded…but with less conviction and longing glances at the cake.

    At 10 the mood in our living room was becoming as chilly as our champagne, and a few people left to go home to watch in the privacy of their own living rooms. Who could blame them.

    But then two latecomers arrived and that helped us focus on something other than the returns for a few minutes as they settled in with food and drinks. 

    What about the cake? I asked, but Pretty held out until around midnight when she put her head in her hands and began crying that it was over. You might as well cut the cake. Which I did – but by then no one really wanted a piece. We never opened the champagne.

    And so today I’ve decided to put the election and cake behind me and return to the basic comfort food groups which for me means a hot dog basket complete with fries and slaw from Rush’s, a local burger chain. My TV was turned to re-runs of Seinfeld tonight instead of the 24/7 news channel MSNBC which has lost me for the foreseeable future. Goodbye to Rachel and Brian for a while. I’d like to say it was fun but then, it wasn’t. 

    As this day draws thankfully to a close, I will turn my attention to playing the numbers game Yushino with my friends online. I find numbers to be more reliable on the Yushino board than they may be elsewhere so that makes me happy.

    And what makes me even happier is my wife and dogs Charly and Spike are already in bed waiting for me. That’s true Girl Power.

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    Tomorrow is another day, and I remain hopeful with Maya Angelou that I will still rise to meet it.

  • The Women on my Ballot in 2016


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    My wife Teresa a/k/a Pretty in cyberspace was on my ballot…as she left to vote at our precinct early this morning, I thought to myself how fortunate I am to be married to a woman who shares my passion for the political and the underdog and is always an activist for social justice wherever she sees the need. I love you, Pretty.

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    My paternal grandmother Betha a/k/a Ma who is sitting next to my grandfather and looking down at her grandchildren in this old picture is on the ballot. Her  wicked sense of humor, her storytelling and her love of family – I wonder what she would have thought about a woman being President of the United States. I’m sure she would have had an opinion and would have voted for her in the early voting for Grimes County, Texas.

    Moving left to right, my mother sits just above and behind my grandmother. My little mother who taught elementary school for twenty-five years after getting her college degree when I was twelve years old, my little mother who played the piano in Southern Baptist churches for more than sixty years, my little mother who was the only person in the world who refused to believe her daughter was a lesbian but finally came to love her unconditionally in her last days…she is on the ballot today.

    This little girl grew up in the Great Depression as the baby of four children raised by a single mother after her father died when she was nine years old. Her mother, my maternal grandmother Louise a/k/a Dude, is on the ballot today. She isn’t in the picture, but she would have loved the idea of a woman as POTUS. She struggled her entire life by working six days a week in a general store as a clerk – and had to fight off the unwanted sexual harassment of the store owner with no legal recourse in the 1940s and 1950s; only the courage and determination she brought with her every day to work allowed her to maintain her dignity and self-respect in the midst of adversity.

    My Aunt Mavis who is sitting next to my mother in my Uncle Ray’s embrace is on the ballot today. In 1969 when she was faced by discrimination as a woman for a promotion in a company she had worked at for many years, she stood up and confronted her employer in Houston, Texas – and lost. She was fired as a result of her stance and really never recovered from the blows she suffered emotionally during that time. She was a working mother of three boys whose second income was important to their family. I admired her for her bravery to take on a fight against all odds and even though she lost, her courage was an inspiration to me. My Aunt Mavis would have rejoiced at the idea of a female POTUS.

    Finally, the woman in the middle holding the little girl is my Aunt Lucille, and she is on the ballot today. She would have been thrilled to vote for Hillary and Tim because she was a Yellow Dog Democrat and would have hit the one button for the whole ticket in her Beaumont, Texas precinct, where no doubt she would have been in the minority but she wouldn’t care. This was a woman who kept going in the midst of personal struggles she never shared with her family – a woman who was ahead of her times in her passion for politics, people and cultural relevance. In her almost 93 years, her mind remained sharp, clear and inquisitive. I loved her dearly.

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    This is my second mother, Willie, and she is on the ballot today. She was my mother’s best friend for almost 50 years and was a very big part of my life during that time. She worked hard, she played hard, and she raised a large family that includes three daughters Leora, Lorna, and Barbara and a granddaughter Carmen who have become very special to Pretty and me. Willie would have had a great deal to say about a woman running for President of the United States, but I’m sure she would have laughed all the way to the voting booth in Fort Bend County, Texas. I would so love to be able to pick up the phone and talk to Willie today. I miss her more than words can write.

    I don’t have a picture of my Aunt Mildred, but she is on the ballot today. She was a mother of five who worked as a secretary/assistant in the local bank in Navasota, Texas and ended up running it for all practical purposes in the 1960s. She was a kind, sweet woman who loved her children and grandchildren – but also thrived at a job which offered her the opportunity to truly make a difference in her community. I believe she would have liked to see a woman on the ballot in today’s election.

    These are the women on my ballot today. When I was in the grocery store this afternoon, I saw a number of women with I Voted stickers on. I have no idea who they voted for, but I’d like to think that every woman I know voted for the women in their past as well as the woman on the ballot. Stronger together. Now that’s real power.

     

  • Dog Catcher Snatches Election Eve Exuberance


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    Our dog Spike is a Texas immigrant to South Carolina. We brought him from Worsham Street where he was unceremoniously dumped by an unknown person – possibly a UPS driver or FedEx person since these trucks always seem to annoy him more than anyone in the world. They are the object of much barking and, if the opportunity presents itself with the back door open, he will race through the doggie door, jump the fence in out back yard, and tear after the delivery trucks as if chasing after the Hounds of the Baskerville. Other than his fence jumping, he is a very sweet dog who makes few demands of us.

    Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

    In the last two weeks, I’ve noticed Spike spends most of his outside time sitting or lying down in front of our wrought iron gate in the back yard gazing through the bars to the street behind us. He’s always been fascinated with Manning Avenue because it has a lot more activity – people walking by, cars driving by, neighbors visiting on their front porches – than the less interesting Canterbury Road our house faces, but he’s never been quite so fascinated with “gate gazing.”

    So I made an effort to solve the mysterious attraction and found that there were three little dogs running up and down the street and one of them made friends with Spike who was a Goliath compared to the smaller dog, but the little fellow liked to visit Spike at the back gate and/or on the street whenever Spike was out on a fence jumping adventure. The little dogs always ran to the same house and I assumed it was their home. Ding, ding, ding. Incorrect assumption.

    This afternoon the Dog Catcher came through our neighborhood and parked in front of the house where the little dogs were staying and scooped them up one by one in front of the house while Spike who had jumped the fence and raced to their rescue barked at me who was unaware of the drama unfolding and simply carrying the garbage bag out the back gate to the dumpster when I heard the Dog Catcher hollering at me. Hey, do you know who that big dog belongs to?

    Yes, he’s mine, I said and began to try to railroad Spike to the back gate. But he wasn’t cooperating so I had to go inside our casa to locate Pretty and ask her to help me corral our dog before he was also scooped up by the Dog Catcher. Pretty to the rescue. With one final look back at his friends, Spike was reluctantly collared and brought safely inside.

    Tonight he is inconsolable. He walked slowly to his crate after he ate and stayed there for the rest of this Election Eve as Pretty and I watched POTUS and FLOTUS and POTUS-in-waiting at a huge rally in Philadelphia… and became very emotional over the possibility of the first woman President in the White House. Thankfully, the long arduous, often distasteful campaign is over and Election Day is here.

    But Spike will have none of it tonight. No joy in Mudville. The Mighty Casey had struck out in his efforts to save his buddies from disaster. Election Eve anticipation and exuberance have been snatched from Casa de Canterbury by a Dog Catcher.

    Shit house mouse, as The Red Man was fond of saying. We need to make a plan.

     

  • Calling All Cousins!


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    So Pretty and I have always been interested in our family trees, and this year I decided to give us our DNA tests as a Christmas present to each other. I can never pick any gift for Pretty because whatever I pick she already bought for herself years ago, and that makes me struggle to come up with something creative for special occasions. DNA idea was brilliant, I thought.

    I’ve been dealing with ordering the kits, supervising and returning sample collections and registering at the appropriate sites to activate. Whew. Quite the ordeal.

    Hooray, one of our results came in this week: mine. I have been thoroughly entertained with the pie chart and other info. Seriously. Thoroughly entertained. I can roam through the site for hours looking for relatives.

    Now I am searching for the 710 cousins who are Out There Somewhere…Calling All Cousins…let’s catch up.

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    Oh, as for Pretty, well, her sample didn’t pass the sample test – so she has to do another one. Sigh. So much for creativity

  • We Are F-A-M-I-L-Y?


    I wonder. If we are truly “family” then we are like many families – highly dysfunctional.

    The older I get the less I value the opinions other people have of me including my height and weight, my politics, my white hair, my house with the Tara columns, my old truck and car, my dog that jumps the fence on a regular basis which annoys me so I know it must annoy my neighbors, my sexual orientation, my “falling away” from the church, my obsession with the tennis majors and sports in general…so if you don’t like any of these traits, perceived foibles or inherited genetics well, to quote Rhett Butler, frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn. At seventy years of age I’m not hopeful for makeovers in any of these areas.

    Family, on the other hand, is a core value with me. You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family, can you? My family is what I started with, and my family will be what I end up with – if I have anything to say on the subject. So whatever attack you have up your sleeve, please don’t disrespect my family. I know I have cousins who aren’t what we hoped they’d be, but they’re my cousins after all and perhaps I’m not what they hoped I’d be, either. But hey, don’t disrespect my cousins in front of me.

    The same feelings go with my country. I don’t know how I was fortunate enough to be born in the United States, but I was and am proud of it. Being an American is another core value for me – democracy is a fundamental principle that I cherish and every year or two or four I watch as the election process unfolds and shake my head or nod it at the conclusion of the campaign seasons when the results are announced. That’s that until the next time. Case closed. You win some. You lose some.

    Here’s the thing. Don’t disrespect democracy – not in front of me, not now, not ever. Don’t sneer at what makes our country great right this minute – free elections with a smooth transition of power. Is the process absolutely 100% guaranteed to not have any flaws at all? Not a chance. But is the process and outcome a cornerstone of our family values as a free nation? You better believe it.

    Some of us were born into the American family, some of us made a conscious choice to join our American family – but ALL of us believe that we wake up every morning in a free country where no one is about to form a military coup to pick our next President, don’t we?

    So we are a dysfunctional family these days and this election season has been “nasty.” But make no mistake – our f-a-m-i-l-y is what we honor as Americans – it’s what we will vote to protect, preserve and defend on November 08th.

    Seriously.

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