I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Reflections

  • True Confessions


    When Mrs. Lucille Lee taught me how to read in the first grade at the Richards public school, I was so excited I tried to read anything and everything that had words: newspapers, magazines, comic books about Superman or Archie and Jughead, signs and billboards,The Hardy Boys mysteries, The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, The Bobsey Twins in Tulip Land, Cherry Ames, Tom Swift Jr; histories of the adventures of Wyatt Earp, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Gene Autry the singing cowboy, Daniel Boone, Annie Oakley, Sam Houston and well, you get the picture.

    I asked for extra books to take home from school, and I was the first person on the steps of the Grimes County Bookmobile every month – I always checked out the maximum magic number of four. I read whenever I took a break from playing outside or hid from my mother who routinely expected me to be practicing the piano since she had the unfortunate task of teaching me to play. Do not disturb. I was busy reading. I had left hot humid Grimes County for exotic places like snowy New England to check on my new friends Jo and Amy and Beth and Meg who were even cooler than the Bobsey twins. I cried when Beth died.

    One day I read an article entitled How do You Tell Your Child there is no Santa Claus? I was mortified when my mother confirmed that he wasn’t real. I was probably nine years old at the time and had heard rumors at school about it but knew for a fact he was real because I’d seen him on the news on television every Christmas. The news was the ultimate standard-bearer of truth.  Now two  heroes bit the dust at once: Santa Claus and CBS reporter Dan Rather at KHOU. Shattering. What was left to believe in? Who could be trusted? At least I knew Lucy and Ricky Ricardo would always be together with Fred and Ethel Mertz. I took comfort in that.

    Somewhere along the line in the next sixty years reading became less about fun and escape and more about school and studying and work and keeping up with the financial markets which in the waning years of the twentieth century moved at warp speed in a gazillion directions. Reading, for me,  moved from printed pages to computer screens and power point presentations. And gradually over my forty years working with numbers in some form or another, I lost my love for words. When I came home at night, the last thing I wanted to do was read.

    The vicissitudes of life intervened, as they will according to my daddy, and I fell in love with a woman who loved to read almost as much as she enjoyed playing tennis. We met in her bookstore Bluestocking Books in the early 90s. She had a wonderful feminist bookstore located on Gervais Street in the Vista in downtown Columbia before the Vista was a hot spot and yet, her store became a gathering place for the fledgling LGBT community.  My interest in books was immediately revived.

    Alas, Bluestocking closed after two and a half years, but my friendship with the owner who was also a passionate lesbian activist remained strong and endured. We were both involved in other long-term personal relationships and weren’t romantically inclined for the next seven years. Strangely, both of our relationships fell apart at the turn of the century, and Teresa the bookstore owner and I got together.

    When we bought our first house, we had to have bookshelves built in the living room and her office. That set the precedent for every house since then. Built-in bookshelves, bookcases of every size and description in every room now at Casa de Canterbury in the front house and bookcases lining the rooms of the little back house we call our bodega. Still we had books on the floor, books on every piece of furniture that has a surface – books, books, books. Plus, Teresa read every night. While I watched TV and played poker on a small hand-held game I was addicted to, she read books.

    Finally, after six years of being surrounded by books, I decided part of my life was missing. But, the interesting thing is that rather than start reading one of the countless books at my disposal, I took a writing course in December, 2006. Teresa encouraged me and of course, I wanted to do well. I wrote a little story about a revival meeting in my Southern Baptist church where  I heard a preacher rant and rave about homosexuals going to hell, and the teacher liked it. Teresa liked it, too, and the cliché “the rest is history” actually applied. That story became the chapter Payday Someday in Deep in the Heart: A Memoir of Love and Longing that was published in November, 2007.

    Blogs, books, magazines – once again I have a love affair with words. This time around, though, the words are mine.  I write them. I own them. They are sometimes well received by readers, and sometimes they aren’t but they come from a reservoir built steadily by years and years of dams focusing on numbers…until finally the dams broke and the words spilled out.  Apparently, I am unable to stop them from tumbling onto a computer screen that sometimes becomes the printed page.

    True confessions: I still don’t read much. People often invite me to become their Goodreads friend, and I love the site so I always say yes, but I’m a terrible friend. In spite of that, I started reading the Selected Letters 1955 – 1995 of May Sarton this week because Teresa laid it on our coffee table and because I think May Sarton is one of the best writers of the last century. She happened to be an out lesbian but refused to be called a “lesbian writer.” Whatever the label, she wrote fabulous letters to her friends and family. I wish I had written to her so she could write me back. She religiously answered her mail every day.

    Letter writing is a lost art, but I suppose Facebook and other social media render it superfluous. My sense is that blog comments are like mini-letters and I love the interaction with those of you who are my pen pals; I am thankful for every reader. Do not disturb. Somewhere someone is reading.

    Thank goodness for the Bluestocking Bookstore owner who continues to inspire my love for words – and for her. I think I should marry that woman. Oops! I forgot. I just did.

     

     

     

     

  • Running to a Hundred


    When we moved to Casa de Canterbury in the summer of 2009, I was not a happy camper. The house had four gigantic white columns on the front porch that I felt made it look like a Tara wannabe from Gone With the Wind which wasn’t a statement either T or I wanted to make as our first impression with company. But the vicissitudes of life, as my daddy would say, brought us to the intersection of Canterbury Road and Manning Avenue; and we moved our belongings and four dogs to the house we would call home.

    The columns are still there, but their visual impact has been lessened over the past seven years with our attempts to get people to lower their gaze to the steps and porch with flowers, rocking chairs, benches, an old school desk and black bird sculptures on the porch.  I’m not sure if it works for our visitors, but I know it helped me adjust. I have made my peace with the house because Teresa’s touches can make any place homey, and the dogs and I gradually settled in together in harmony with each other and our home.

    One of the unexpected bonuses we’ve found has been our neighbors across the street on Canterbury and behind our house on Manning Avenue.  We have seen Debbie and Mark’s children marry and have grandchildren that they adore. We saw Norma and Alan’s two boys play soccer in their yard when the boys were in middle school and high school. Now we’ve seen them graduate from high school and leave home for college. The cycle of life passes before my window in my office on the second floor, and I like my neighbors on Canterbury Road.

    The neighbors behind us on Manning Avenue are also special.  Monroe and his son Anthony have the most wonderful flowers every year – Monroe, a stately African-American veteran about my age, tries to help me do better with my back yard which is always a disaster. Last year we had a contest to see who could keep their flowers alive and beautiful for the longest time. Monroe won, of course. Not even close. Anthony and I share a passion for sports and politics – topics we love to talk about when we gossip.

    Dorothy lives next door to Monroe and Anthony.  She is an elderly tiny frail African-American woman who always has a smile and a hug for me. She, too, loves to have flowers growing in her yard and makes a point every year to pull any weeds brave enough to grow next to her lilies and daffodils.  I have seen her many times laboring in her yard with her back bent to hoe the weeds she calls her devils. Dorothy still lives alone, but her family takes turns staying with her now. She has a dog she named Sheeva which she claimed she named for me.  Spike loves Sheeva and waits for her to make an escape from Dorothy’s yard to his fence.

    Last week on my birthday I walked over to invite Dorothy to stop by the house for a piece of birthday cake and champagne later that evening. I knocked on her door and waited for her to open it. Sometimes it takes a while because she has days when she moves at a snail’s pace. I have those days, too, so I don’t mind the wait.

    She came out of her door and we visited on her front porch. I told her today is my  70th. birthday and I want you to come over for a piece of cake and champagne around 7 o’clock. Her eyes lit up and she smiled at me while she gave me a big hug and kiss.

    “Happy Birthday,” she said. “And would you believe it? Yesterday was my birthday, too.”

    “You’re kidding me,” I exclaimed. “Well Happy Birthday to you, too! How old were you?”

    “Eighty-seven,” she said. “And I’m running to a hundred.”

    ” What? To a hundred? Really, Dorothy?”

    “Yes,” she nodded emphatically. “And I want you to run with me. I want you to stay right behind me. Don’t you try to get ahead of me. We’re running together.”

    I wish everyone could reach the age of 70 years, but not everyone is so fortunate. My dad wasn’t. Teresa’s mother wasn’t.  They didn’t live long enough to have family and friends say exceedingly kind things about them in person and certainly not long enough to have heart-felt posts in cyberspace about their birthday on social media.  I don’t often use the word “blessed,” but I really can’t think of a word that describes my feelings this week any better. Fortunate. Content. Peaceful. Lucky. Grateful. Blessed.

    Running to a hundred with Dorothy? I doubt it. But I wouldn’t bet against Dorothy, if I were you.

     

     

     

  • Is It Time for a Tune-up?


    My grandfather told me many times that he never understood why my daddy avoided regular maintenance on any of his automobiles.  At least change the oil, I heard him say to my dad a thousand times. Now I’m not sure why my dad who was scrupulous about his shirts and ties that he wore every day to work at the school  and who was fastidious about having not one smear on his eyeglasses in the morning had such a total disregard for getting the oil changed in his car, but I will say I remember we changed Chevrolets more frequently than the oil.

    With that in mind, I try to make sure we maintain our 2006 Toyota 4-Runner we’ve had for eight years and our “new” 2007 Dodge Dakota that replaced the old 2004 Dodge Dakota which finally gave up recently after eight years, umpteen thousand-mile trips back and forth to Texas and almost 200,000 miles. Now, that was a truck I loved…and maintained.

    Next week on the 21st of April I will be 70 years old.  I can’t tell you how old that makes me feel, but I can tell you I never thought I’d live to see 30.  And here I am forty years longer and wondering if I’ve had enough maintenance during the past seven decades from 1946 to 2016 to keep me running for a little while longer. My  Medicine Men (and Women) – the doctors, dentists, dermatologists, psychiatrists and ophthalmologists who faithfully prescribed my Magic Meds for the past forty years and the pharmacists who faithfully dispensed them have certainly done their part.  As my longest-serving doctor Frank Martin, Jr., says, “You are the healthiest person I know considering the terrible shape you’re in.” Now that’s a compliment to be proud of.  Thanks, Frank.

    So at 70 I am very happy to be able to negotiate the activities of daily living, as we say in the jargon of post-retirement life and in the language of the long-term care insurance policies I sold in a time long ago but not so far away. I may congratulate myself and  think  “cleared it” when I step out of the bathtub these days, but at least I have taken one small step for mankind when I don’t have to call T for help to make that step. My attitude toward bathing has undergone a kind of metamorphosis over the past few years from “daily” really means “daily” to “gosh, did I take a shower yesterday?” to “Hey, T, are we seeing anybody today?” I love a shower after I take it, but I consider that time to be one of the most boring activities of daily living ever created.

    I have more fears as I approach 70.  My grandmother suffered from severe depression in her late sixties and early seventies and was supposed to be taking Librium in addition to the electroshock treatments she received at various mental hospitals in the 1960s.  My mother always assumed and accused her of deliberately refusing to take her meds, but now I wonder if she didn’t take them because she couldn’t afford to pay for them. Medicines have always been expensive, and my grandmother lived on a very small Social Security pension since she had been paid a pittance for her years as a clerk in the general store. So did she refuse to take them, or was she unable to pay for them…a mystery I will never solve.

    Fast forward one generation and my mother’s dementia that became the thief who robbed her of her memories and dignity began in her early seventies and finally ended  shortly after her 85th. birthday. Needless to say, heavy, heavy hangs the dread of dementia in this daughter.  I am hoping that somehow in the genetic mishmash that belongs to me the genes of my father will swoop in, take over and beat back  the bad ones of my mother; of course, there’s that little heart problem on his side of the family. Sigh.

    I belong to the Baby Boomer generation, a name derived from the overwhelming population increase in the years immediately following WWII. I have read about our excesses and expectations ad nauseam and can best describe my cohorts and me as a hot mess. Our importance has not necessarily been marked so much by our achievements but by the collective influences of our sheer numbers on society as we blundered along from one century to the next. We trampled all over ourselves and did it right out there in front of God and everybody. We have adapted to and embraced technological changes reluctantly but have commandeered entire communication systems for our personal advancement and entertainment.  Think Facebook. We have preached self-reliance all our lives but now most of us rely on Social Security programs as the main source of our retirement income and medical safety net.

    At 70 I am dealing with feelings of invisibility and incompetence. In a social gathering it’s best for me to be seen and not heard, which is part of my problem. Last night I was at a small get-together at a friend’s house for a birthday party. The group of eight was sitting outdoors on a deck overlooking a beautiful Columbia yard in the springtime at dusk. The weather was perfect – the champagne excellent and the conversation lively.  Two of the women had just gotten back from vacation and were talking about their cruise in the Cayman Islands. There was a lull, and I asked them what a “Dizzy Cruise” was – that was a new one on me. The entire group stopped talking and stared at me. Teresa said “Disney Cruise, Disney Cruise” and I was rescued. But clearly I don’t hear like I used to.

    And in the middle of the health, social and financial issues we Baby Boomers are experiencing as we turn 70, we also have to worry about our legacies. How will we be remembered? Will we be remembered? Why should we be remembered? Yikes. Enough already. If 70 isn’t a year for a tune-up, I’d be shocked with the plugs my daddy never replaced. In fact,  I think I’ll keep a maintenance journal  this year – so stay tuned in for more tune-ups.

     

     

     

     

  • Politics and Happiness


    The American author Jodi Picoult has this to say about happiness. “There are two ways to be happy: improve your reality or lower your expectations.”

    As I stand perilously close to my 70th. birthday – let’s say on the brink – I can truthfully say I’ve employed both those recipes for happiness at different stages of my past 69 years.  The younger to middle age years and “early” senior years were most often marked by trying to improve my reality… at work and in my personal and community life.  Was failure a possibility? Certainly, but if I worked hard enough, if I loved deeply enough, if I cared passionately enough – failure to improve my reality was unlikely.

    Alas, at the turn of the century I think, I began to believe failure was a possibility and that sometimes my reality was suspect. What I thought I wanted wasn’t what brought me happiness at all. In fact, it brought me just the opposite.  And I began a course of lowering my expectations in my work life that spilled over into the other areas of my reality as well.

    Of course this is to be expected as we age, isn’t it.  We have permission to grow more cantankerous, more outrageous and yes, more cynical as our hairs whiten and our skin sags. My friend Linda Ketner accuses me of “settling” when I mention she would be happier if she just lowered her expectations of people and their ability to create sweeping social changes. My partner Teresa is equally incapable of expecting less than the best from the people she works with and frequently the woman she lives with.

    I give this background to say that I have low, very low expectations about the political landscape of my country these days. When I read about the daily killings of innocent people in our streets, schools, churches and other places of worship and watch local, state and federal government officials that I help to elect do nothing to intervene and in fact even write laws to permit guns to be carried into classrooms – my expectations are lowered. When I have to think twice about going to a movie on a Sunday afternoon with the gnawing image of people being shot in a movie theater in the back of my mind, I have to lower my expectations for safety.  And I’m an old white woman. My personal fears rank low on the totem pole of universal fears for crimes of hate perpetrated on younger people of color on a regular basis.

    All of which brings me to the current state of politics in this election cycle for President of the United States in November of 2016.  I had low, very low expectations for what I anticipated would be a long, long, LONG season of debates, speeches, TV commercials interrupting my favorite shows, countless signs cluttering up any possible unobstructed open common space in an otherwise gorgeous panorama of azaleas and dogwood trees and seas of bluebonnets, obnoxious bumper stickers on the car in front of me whenever I drove to the grocery store, etc.  I had low, very low expectations for this political process that we Americans watch every four years to elect the most recognized leader in the whole planet.

    But I can tell you my expectations weren’t nearly low enough for the spectacles I have seen and heard over the past few weeks from the candidates vying for the nominations of the two major political parties in my country.  Nastiness. Name-calling. Rudeness.  Offensive TV commercials.  The candidates look like bullies on a playground when they weren’t chosen to play with others. These are the norm for campaigning these days and we have a media that not only feeds on the norm but pours chum in the sea to encourage the sharks to circle and attack each other.

    So much for lowering expectations.

    I am not happy. As a matter of fact, I am very unhappy with the violence now taking place at political rallies for one of the candidates. Unhappy – but not surprised. When a candidate chooses to emphasize his vision of an America that is isolationist and embraces the legitimacy of intolerance and bigotry  and a culture of violence as a solution for disagreements, it is no small wonder his rallies have become a scene of chaos, confusion and collateral damage. I am not only unhappy, I am horrified and ashamed.

    I want to change my reality as I hope the American people will refuse to be happy with what has become a dangerously low series of expectations. We deserve better – we should expect better. We must demand better.

     

  • In Memoriam: Carole Stoneking


     

    Not All Pioneers Rode in Covered Wagons

    One of my favorite shows on television when I was young was Wagon Train starring Ward Bond as the wagon train master and Robert Horton as the scout.  I was eleven years old when the show started and used to watch it on a TV set that was in a short wooden cabinet  which held a tiny screen the size of an iPad.  Black and white shows on a very small TV.  Wagons Ho.

    Each week the episode typically involved an obstacle to smooth passage on the seventeen hundred mile trek from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California. Someone was ill or one of the wagons lost a wheel and ran amok hurtling down a steep hill or there was the constant threat of unfriendly Native Americans who for some reason didn’t like the idea of strangers taking over their homelands or constant bickering between the wagon master and his support staff about which way was the safest route for the next day’s journey.  Always something, as Roseanne Roseannadanna would say.

    Yet, in spite of a multitude of difficulties, the wagon train kept going and I kept going with them for eight seasons. The cast changed through the years, but the people continued to persevere in their westward adventures.  Today when I think of the term pioneers,  I have a mental image of the seemingly endless stream of men, women and children riding in covered wagons to become the first settlers in new territories west of the Mississippi River.  Webster’s dictionary definition of pioneers confirms that image partially as it calls pioneers  the”first to settle in a new territory.”

    But that’s not the only dictionary definition of the word pioneer. Webster also says that pioneers are “a person or group that originates or helps open up a new line of thought or activity…”.  Not all pioneers rode in covered wagons and not all new territories are limited to land.  For some, the goals of a journey involve the search for new lines of thought like equal treatment and fairness regardless of differences, and  the distances traveled in personal lives to defend diversity often seem as far as the miles between St. Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento, California.

    Carole Stoneking was a woman who fits that description of a pioneer. She was born in 1937, a time when the trains and automobiles made covered wagons obsolete. Her birthplace was the motor city: Detroit, Michigan.  She loved art and wanted to be a fine artist but was told at a very young age that was an impossible dream – no woman could really be a successful professional artist.  She loved women, too, in a time when homosexuality was considered to be a religious abomination as well as a mental illness – not to mention a criminal activity for which she could be thrown in jail.

    In spite of the dangers involved, Carole announced she was a lesbian in 1956 and began a long-term relationship with another woman in Detroit.  She was nineteen years old. (This was thirteen years before the Stonewall Riots which some historians consider to be the birth of the LGBT civil rights movement.) Her family contacted the police to try to have her arrested and removed from her girlfriend’s apartment, but the police advised them that wasn’t possible because she wasn’t being held against her will. The obstacles and adversaries Carole continued to face in her real life as a lesbian for the next sixty years were as difficult for her to overcome  as the ones faced by the Wagon Train pioneers, and yet, like them, she persevered.

    Her lifetime of advocacy for women’s rights and equal rights for the LGBT community began when she came out in 1956 and ended today with her death  in Lexington, South Carolina.  Carole was proud of her fight for equality and fairness that spanned six decades of sweeping cultural changes, and she embraced the groups that were formed to show “new lines of thought” about homosexuality.  While she never rode in a covered wagon, she also never missed an opportunity to ride on a float in a Pride Parade in Columbia.

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    The final Webster definition of a pioneer is one who “opens or prepares for others to follow.”  Every time Carole spoke up for equal treatment, every letter she wrote, every meeting she attended, every march she supported with her presence, every hour she spent recording her history – she was preparing for others to follow…and we have…and we will.

    When I think of a pioneer today, I will remember a fellow traveler who struggled with the imperfections we all have on a journey we all make – and of a woman who helped to open up new ways of thinking not just for herself but for those who will come after her.

    Rest in peace, Carole.