I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Reflections

  • …And Your So-Called Social Security…


    One of my favorite country singers and songwriters, Merle Haggard, wrote one of my favorite songs, Big City with lyrics that are much more meaningful to me in 2015 than they were in 1981 when I first heard them.

              “Gimme all I’ve got coming to me…

    and keep your retirement

    and your so-called Social Security.

    Big City, turn me loose and set me free.”

    Yep, in 1981 I was thirty-five years old and the owner of a very small CPA firm that had a growing clientele and low overhead.  How small was very small?  That would be one person: me.  I had been working full-time since 1967 and was in robust health – full of piss and vinegar – and had visions of acquiring great wealth through hard work and perseverance in America, the land of equal opportunity.  Retirement?  Social Security?  Bah, humbug.  Irrelevant and unimportant, but I paid my Social Security taxes right along with everyone else.

    Fast forward to 2008, the year I turned sixty-two.  My robust health became more of a pisser than vinegar, and I was forced to retire much earlier than I had planned – and long before acquiring great wealth.  I had worked for forty-one years in a variety of jobs with numbers as their primary common denominator and had made both good and bad career moves in those years.  I was moderately successful in the good years and financially challenged in the lean ones.

    Frank Sinatra sang about all the good and lean years and all the in-between years, and he could have been talking about my life as an entrepreneur.  Of course, he wasn’t, but still…

     Regardless of the triumphs and tragedies in my working life, I continued to pay my income taxes and Social Security taxes every year right along with everyone else and at age 62 I became disabled and began to receive my retirement benefits from the Social Security Administration.  At the end of each benefit year, the SSA sends me “Important Information” for the next year which typically includes my benefit amount, new rules and regulations, how to contact them if I have questions,  Medicare premiums, blah, blah, blah.

    At the end of 2013, I noticed a new bullet point:

    Benefits for Same-Sex Couples

    Due to a Supreme Court decision, we now are able to pay benefits to some

    same-sex couples.  We encourage people who think they may be eligible to apply now.

    It wasn’t a super-sized bullet point or anything like that.  As a matter of fact,  it was squeezed in between “How to Access my Social Security Online Services” and the “Affordable Care Act.”  If you blinked or skipped the info page to only look at “Your New Benefit Amount” which is probably what most people do, you would have missed it.  I read it with disbelief and amazement and a sense of immense satisfaction for the couples in places like Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut and California – a few of the eighteen  states and District of Columbia where marriage equality was a reality at the end of 2013.  The SSA would be making re-calculations on a host of benefits for affected American citizens.

    This year, at the end of last week, my “Important Information” arrived from the SSA.  Once again, squeezed in between “To Access my Social Security Online Services” and the “Affordable Care Act” was the following:

    Benefits for Same-Sex Couples

    We now are able to pay benefits to more same-sex couples.

    We encourage people to contact us to find out if they or their children are eligible for

    benefits or a different benefit amount.

    Indeed.  “More same-sex couples” refers to the increasing number of states with marriage equality at the end of 2014.  The total is up to 35 plus the District of Columbia, and my feelings of disbelief and amazement and immense satisfaction are combined with the joy and exhilaration that comes with residing in the 35th. state, my second home state of South Carolina.  Yee Haw – pigs are now flying over the Palmetto State Capitol, and there is a definite chill to the weather in hell these days.

    Because my prospects for acquiring great wealth look slimmer than my prospects for acquiring great weight, I’m afraid I can’t sing along with Merle who apparently didn’t want his Social Security.  I’m happy to have mine and to be on the receiving end of what I paid into for more than forty years – and even happier to know that my family will be accorded the same respect and fair treatment that every American family deserves.

    Thanks Merle, but gimme all I got coming to me including my so-called Social Security, and then Big City, turn me loose and set me free.

  • What’s Done is Done


    In a few days the year 2014 will be in the history books, and the glass will be half empty or half full depending on which glass you pick up for 2015.  So many glasses to choose from in a New Year.

    Time to shed the skins of what ifs and buts and the Three Stooges of couldas, wouldas and shouldas.  What’s done is done.  We can’t change 2014, but we will have a new opportunity in 2015 to make amends for our transgressions and forgive ourselves as we forgive others, to celebrate our achievements and victories won in the past year as we remain committed to each other and to the causes we support.

    In this world of too much information bombarded relentlessly in cyberspace every day, can we somehow manage to maintain an up close and personal connection to the people who matter in our lives; and can we be warriors for kindness in 2015 and set good examples in our homes first and then our communities and then our nation so that the news is better for everyone.

    In a nation of plenty may we find food for the hungry, walls for the wind and roofs for the rain for the homeless, laughter and joy for the chronically ill; comfort for those who grieve, and hope for those who struggle with the demons of doubt and depression.  These are our opportunities for the New Year and Resolutions that will transform our lives and the lives of others.

    No need to wait for 2015 – the glass is half full already.

    We can start today.  Be kind to one another.

    Thank you so much for stopping by to spend time with me here in the past years.  I appreciate your comments and visits and Teresa and I wish you all a Happy Holiday Season and a New Year of promise with whatever glass you choose.

     

    pasta fresca 2

     

     

     

     

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  • Calling All Book Lovers!


    I have a few limited edition copies remaining from my first three published books and will sign and ship anywhere – please check out my Super Saving Prices by clicking on my about.me link on this page!

  • The Subject is Betrayal


    I feel strangely torn between the euphoria of our marriage license issued on the 19th. of November and the depression I felt four days later on the 23rd. when Columbia City Councilman Cameron Runyan wrote a column in the State newspaper entitled “Why I Cannot Support the Redefinition of Marriage” to explain his solo vote against extending marriage benefits to same-sex partners of city employees.  In the editorial Councilman Runyan asked us to respect his “worldview” which he said doesn’t include a city with equal rights for all of its employees.  And I totally would respect it except…

    His “worldview” mysteriously changed the day of the vote.  Was he the same Cameron Runyan Facebook friend who visited our Guild and other GLBT meetings during his campaign for City Council – the same Cameron Runyan who asked us to raise money for his election because he was a fresh new voice that pledged to speak for fairness and equal rights for all the citizens of Columbia – apparently not.  Then who was that masked man who spoke with forked tongue and whose hand I shook in friendship.

    With friends like Cameron Runyan, who needs enemies?

     betrayal n. 1. treachery, treason, sedition, disloyalty, unfaithfulness, falseness, breach of faith, bad faith, perfidy, double-dealing, double-cross, two-timing; deception, chicanery, duplicity, trickery.       (Webster’s everyday thesaurus)

    Ferguson has become a new word added to the vernacular of shameful American tragedies involving betrayal mixed with violence and the loss of too many young people in too many different parts of our country as a result of too many guns.  Columbine…Sandy Hook…Trayvon…Ferguson…is this the Legacy of the Lost that will haunt us as a nation for generations.  Is this the breach of faith that defines us as a people in the eyes of the rest of the world and, more importantly, is it the duplicity that we fail to see in our own eyes and hear with our own ears.

    I hear the sounds of betrayal at night when sirens scream to answer the calls from gunshots behind my house.  I hear the cries of betrayal when a young woman who lived not far from me was killed by youthful gang members who shot her by mistake.  This is the ultimate betrayal of a nation and a community, yet it is often impossible to trace the footsteps that led us to an environment of distrust among ourselves and the inability to change our culture of violence.

    We cannot look to our elected representatives in the Houses of Congress or, indeed, the White House, for different directions of positive change in our own houses and neighborhoods.  They are unfaithful to their electorate and poor examples for any of us to follow.  They are double-dealing double-crossing contentious factions which display no real interest in the daily lives of the people they supposedly represent.  Their betrayal is creeping and insidious and creates an atmosphere of indifference and disrespect from their citizens.

    We must look to ourselves then and accept our responsibility for our part in Ferguson.  Columbia is Ferguson.  South Carolina is Ferguson.  Texas is Ferguson.  We are all Ferguson.  We must examine our own lives – what we do, how we feel – and whether we have a sense of urgency in doing good for others, in treating everyone fairly and with respect.  We must turn betrayal into loyalty and faithfulness, into safeguarding and protecting.

    Margaret Mead said “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

    And that, Councilman Runyan, is my “worldview.”

    Onward.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Thanks Giving: Good News Travels Fast


    My friend Bervin is a retired serviceman who has helped Teresa and me in our assorted yards in the houses we’ve lived in for the fourteen years we’ve been living together.  I’m not sure how old he is…my guess is he’s in his mid to late fifties.  He is divorced and doesn’t have children of his own but has tons of nieces and nephews that he loves dearly.  He took care of his father for a number of years until his dad passed away the same year my mother died.  Bervin and I talk politics and football regularly when he comes to our house to work on one of his days off from his full-time job at Wal-Mart.  He is a tall handsome African-American man with a soothing voice.

    This morning Bervin called me to say he’d seen Teresa and me on the news last night.  He called to tell us congratulations on our marriage license and added “ain’t nothing wrong with that.  No, nothing.”

    Austin is a seventeen-year-old senior at Montgomery High School in Montgomery, Texas.  He was our next-door neighbor on Worsham Street for the last year we had our house there.  Austin is a terrific baseball player and recently got a scholarship to go to Angelina College in Texas next year.  He is a scholar athlete with super good grades to go with his good looks and other talents.  He used to come visit me sometimes and often brought food that his mother Melina had cooked and sent to me.  We moved from Worsham this past April, and I miss our talks.

    Yesterday Austin sent me a text that said “hey mrs. Sheila I’m proud and happy for you and mrs. Teresa!  love you both!”

    From Bervin and Austin and our neighbors across the street on Canterbury Road to family and friends in Texas and South Carolina to cyberspace friends in Mexico, South Africa, France, the Netherlands, Australia, Canada… from friends in the USA in California on the west coast  to New York on the east coast and everywhere in between – literally from sea to shining sea… we have received incredible messages of love and support over the past two days as the State of South Carolina became the 35th (or 34th depending on who’s counting!) state to make same-sex marriage legal.  Personal translation: Teresa and I were issued a marriage license by Richland County Probate Judge Amy McCullough late yesterday afternoon in the midst of an avalanche of good wishes.

    We have been touched and overwhelmed by the media and social media response and are beyond grateful for the support.  Teresa refuses to watch the TV interviews on the internet because she was unprepared to actually go into the courthouse yesterday morning.  I was going by to pay the fee ($42.50 for anyone wondering) and she was staying in the car with the engine running to keep warm.  When Judge McCullough informed me she was able to complete our application process, she also told me Teresa had to be there to re-sign the paperwork we had signed in October.  I texted T to come in, and the media began filming when she joined me at the desk.  Teresa was horrified because she hadn’t washed her hair!

    I, on the other hand, did watch the interviews last night and realized I clearly turned into a pillar of salty tears when the reality of the moment hit me and I was asked about my feelings…my feelings?  I had no words then and not many more now. I wonder how any couple feels when they apply for a marriage license?  Excited, nervous, joyful, proud, like something good is about to happen?  I wonder how the suffragettes in South Carolina felt when they voted for the first time…I wonder what the people of color in South Carolina felt when they saw the “colored” signs coming down…I wonder what the illegal immigrants who have lived in South Carolina for decades will feel when they get a driver’s license…maybe I had those feelings or ones like them.  Regardless, this member of the “older couple” couldn’t have ever imagined a moment like this when she was a little girl who asked another little girl to marry her in the early 1950s.   Wow…was what I felt.  Jubilation T. Cornpone…was what I felt.

    One of the interesting comments made in a TV interview I watched was that Teresa and I had been “dating for fourteen years.”  Gosh, was that what we’d been doing for fourteen years?  Maybe that’s what young people call living together these days, and I know this youthful reporter was not intentionally offensive.  Or maybe this was a tiny example of why marriage equality is necessary: to say hey this isn’t dating – this is my family we’re talking about, a family that has been through the same highs and lows your family goes through except we lacked the piece of paper that your parents had to make it legal.  Dating, to me, is a trial run.  Teresa and I are already in the race together and way past the starting gate.

    To the GLBTQ activists we have worked with for the past thirty years in South Carolina and around the country – thank you for each goal we set and each victory we made happen together.  The burdens have been much easier to bear when they are shared, and we’ve had warriors with Great Spirit walking every step with us.  We admire and respect your leadership and bravery over the long haul that is the task of changing a culture and fundamentally altering the political landscape.

    I often say the battles are for those who will come after us and that the next generation will benefit from our efforts in the state, and there is truth in that.  But I also want to remember my sisters and brothers who did not live to share these celebrations with us.  Last night we went to dinner with one of my oldest friends Millie who took Teresa and me and another good friend Patti to an Italian restaurant.  Millie had made the plans a week ago so we weren’t there to celebrate the excitement of yesterday but I confess I did carry the license with me.  I wasn’t leaving home without it.

    pasta fresca pic

    The waitresses were fabulous and came to our booth to congratulate us when they realized why we were ordering champagne and snapping pictures and brought our desserts with candles to end the dinner with a bang.  Our server was a young woman with a great smile, and she drew “hearts” on our to- go box.  Really sweet.

    pasta fresca 2

    But Millie’s partner of fifteen years, Cindy, wasn’t with us because she had died earlier this year.  Millie said Cindy would have wanted them to be next in line to apply for the marriage license.  This was not to be for her and many of our brothers and sisters who have gone before us.  We will always honor their memories.

    One week from today we will observe my favorite holiday of the year, Thanksgiving Day.  Teresa and I will make our usual trip to the upstate to have a late evening family meal with her mother’s people in the fellowship hall of the First Baptist Church of Fingerville, South Carolina.  I always love being with her family because they are good people and because nothing is more important to me than family.

    This year I’m getting a head start on the holiday and giving thanks for the woman who loved me enough to say yes, I want to marry you.  That’s the Good News tonight.  Tell it.