Reflections – Page 17 – I'll Call It Like I See It

being present in the past

“Naynay, I’ve been busy in the pool today so I need you to make sure you clean my tree house before we come back again. It’s really a mess,” said four-year-old granddaughter Ella to me as she handed me her small toy broom with a serious expression before she made a mad dash to keep up with her mother and two-year-old sister Molly who were already at the gate on the way to their car.

The girls, their mother and Pretty had been to the zoo one morning with cousin Caleb and his parents earlier this week, but I couldn’t rally for that fun excursion so I was happy they brought the party to our house in the afternoon. Everyone was trying to keep cool in the triple-digit summer heat.

Ella’s definition of “tree house” puzzling

hope my cleaning passes Ella’s inspection this week

(she was right about one thing: it was messy)

And yet, as I try to live every day in the present, I am a wanderer in the wilderness of my past during the quiet times when the dogs haven’t spied dangers from the mail delivery, Pretty is at work in her antique empire, the granddaughters are busy making new friends at summer camp – just me with the memories of another time and place.

George Patton Morris holding his granddaughter (me) in 1946

Barber Morris, as he was known for more than sixty years, wore a starched white shirt with a carefully selected tie every day of his life until he closed his barber shop in Richards, Texas in the mid 1980s. I thought of him especially this week on his birthday, July 29th., and rummaged through my first baby pictures book to find images of this man I adored until he died in 1987.

George was born in 1898 in Walker County, Texas, the ninth of eleven children born to William James and Margaret Antonio Moore Morris. Maggie Morris (1864-1963) was from Winn Parish, Louisiana and had her first child in 1882 when she was eighteen years old, her last child in 1906 when she was forty-two. Imagine what their family life was like raising eleven children on a small farm in rural southeast Texas at the turn of the twentieth century. Surviving the Great Depression of the 1930s as a widow with the death of her husband in 1927; living through two world wars. I knew my great-grandmother because my grandfather took me to visit her when she came to see her daughters, his sisters Erma, Berniece and Hattie Jane, in Huntsville which was only a half hour from where we lived in Richards. She was a tiny woman, frail, and like my grandfather, not very chatty.

George and his wife Betha holding their granddaughter in 1946

If only I could see my family again…I would ask countless questions I didn’t have sense enough to ask when I was a teenager absorbed with keeping my secret homosexual self safe. Today I’d want to spend the time thanking them for the lives they lived, the sacrifices they made, the foundation they laid that gave me the opportunities I’ve had to live the good life. I am grateful for my precious memories, how they linger, how they ever flood my soul.

Back to the present, though. It’s time to pick up Ella and Molly from summer school camp.

Naynay, can we have ice cream today? You betcha, and your tree house is spotless.

July 31, 2024

I worry about the long moral arc of the universe bending in the wrong direction

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I am prone to worrying – that’s right. They call me the worrier, and apparently the older I am, the more I think I have to worry about. The hurrieder I go, the behinder I get as the saying goes; and the slower I go, the worrieder I am. The world to me has gone mad which makes me doubt whether the direction that long moral arc of the universe Dr. King talked about is actually bending toward justice. No justice, no peace is a chant sometimes used by marchers in various peaceful protest movements – I have internalized this slogan to define my world view, and that makes me worry about everything.

I need hope, I need to feel better. I need someone to stand for truth, for accountability, for a future for my granddaughters to live authentic lives free from fear. I need a woman who will cut through the crap of my cynicism and crisis of confidence in the institutions I’ve cherished for seventy-eight years. Have I been living in a fantasy country?

I need Letitia James, the first African American and first woman to be elected Attorney General for the State of New York in 2018; a woman who was born in New York City – was one of eight children; a product of the public school system, BA from City of New York University’s Lehman College, JD from HBCU Howard University in Washington, D.C., Master of Public Administration from Columbia University.

Return with me now to the thrilling days of yesteryear – in reality earlier this year in February – return with me to the feeling I had when I first heard James say those remarkable words “Justice has been served.” Mr. Trump and his financial cohorts were hit with an incredible civil judgment in the amount of $463.9 million dollars for a massive fraud case. When Mr. Trump called No Fair, AG James threatened to sell his real estate if he couldn’t come up with the assets. No one is above the law, not even the former president of the United States, right?

Oh, gosh. Turns out that’s not quite right anymore, according to the twice-baked, bought- and-sold Supremes in their 6-3 majority ruling last week on presidential immunity. Shame on you, John Roberts, Amy Barrett – you both knew better and yet still supported a decision that struck at the heart of that moral arc of the universe tilting away from equality under the law rather than bending toward justice. Gorsuch, Alito, Kavanaugh and Thomas continue on their road to constitutional perdition so no surprises there.

I also need the three women Supremes I call my Dream Girls, the women who dissented from the majority in the presidential immunity ruling: Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagen and Ketanji Brown Jackson. I need for them to get two votes each instead of one since they are apparently the only justices interested in justice. Just a thought.

Okay. I see today is Old Blue Monday as my paternal grandmother used to say in her weekly letter to me in my college years and beyond. I wish I could chat with her now – she was a woman of substance if not a woman of means, a woman with a wicked sense of humor, a great storyteller. She was also a worrier which used to annoy me in my youth because I was often the target of her worries. Little did she know as a survivor of the Great Depression and two World Wars that she hadn’t seen anything yet.

Please stay tuned.

July 8, 2024

Texas Beer Joints – and the Undecided

Personal milestones are typically meaningless to others; but as I approach number 1,000 of these I’ll Call It Like I See It posts over the past fourteen years I decided to visit the archives with the objective of identifying some of my favorites. This one was originally published in Septemer, 2016. Return with me to those thrilling days of yesteryear. Uh, oh. The Undecided are probably still Undecided.

When I was a little tomboy growing up in southeast Texas, I had dreams of one day – sometime somewhere – being able to go to a beer joint. My family was Southern Baptist and the very mention of an adult alcoholic beverage would send my mother into horrible face contortions and very loud condemnations of beer and beer drinkers. Beer joints were the epitome of evil. Naturally her hyperbole aroused my curiosity.

My mother’s aunts, my grandmother’s German sisters, worshipped at the Church of the Blessed Beer Joint, however, and I loved to listen to their tales when they came from Bright Lights, Big City Houston to visit us in No Lights, Tiny Town Richards. They were a personal trip for me…and a glimpse of possibilities for me down the road.

The road did bring me to my share of beer joints in my adult life, although I confess I never shared the same enthusiasm for them as my Aunt Dessie and Aunt Selma did. Most of the ones I went to when I got old enough were drab, dingy, smoke-filled rooms with a jukebox, a few old tables and a bar with stools too tall for me to belly up to easily. I loved the jukebox more than the taste of the Lone Star beer.

As the fickle finger of fate would have it, Teresa and I moved back to Texas in 2010 and bought a home on Worsham Street in Montgomery, Texas – only 18 miles from Richards. We drove many times to visit my family in the Fairview Cemetery outside of Richards and on one of those drives up Highway 105 I discovered the Texas beer joint of my childhood dreams in the little town of Dobbin. Some dreams really do come true!

We stopped for the burgers and bbq

Best burgers EVER

We waited in the bar which the owner Bobby Holder built himself – took him three years to finish – perfection

A little something for everyone

Thirst quencher

Old family pictures on ancient organ

Bobby as a little boy

All in all, Holder’s had delicious food, and had I been younger, I would have come back for the night life…or maybe not. My Texas beer joint dreams had come true without the first sip of a Lone Star.

And finally, here’s a wall hanging at Holder’s that I thought of yesterday after the presidential debate on Monday night. I talked to my friend Carmen about the debate, and she said many of her friends weren’t going to vote this year…or were undecided…

And there you have it.

July 3, 2024

Mama Mia, ABBA made me a Dancing Queen

Dancing Queen? Just kidding. Anyone who has seen me on a dance floor from the time my mother tried to teach me how to rock n roll with Dick Clark and American Bandstand after school in the living room of our home in Richards, Texas to dancing with Pretty and our granddaughters in their kitchen to Roe, Roe, Roe, your Vote – anyone who has seen me try to dance will say gosh, Sheila can still carry a tune plus she’s got rhythm but Lordy, that old woman can’t dance.

I may not be a Dancing Queen, but ABBA will always be my favorite musical group, my go-to songs when I think I can dance.

Last week I watched the movie Mama Mia with Meryl Streep and a bunch of other people I know and like because it’s on my list of all time favorite movies and because I had a round of the epizooti. It was so good I watched it twice and then moved on to The Devil Wears Prada. I only watched it once, though, you’ll be pleased to know.

Since I was in a prone position with no urges to dance, I listened to the words of a beautiful, slower tempo song from Mama Mia that Meryl sang in a poignant scene with her daughter. Beyond the obvious feelings I have now with my granddaughters, I can also connect the words to my relationship with Pretty. Life is often slipping through our fingers all the time.

“Slipping Through My Fingers”

Schoolbag in hand, she leaves home in the early morning
Waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile
I watch her go with a surge of that well known sadness
And I have to sit down for a while
The feeling that I’m losing her forever
And without really entering her world
I’m glad whenever I can share her laughter
That funny little girl

Slipping through my fingers all the time
I try to capture every minute
The feeling in it
Slipping through my fingers all the time
Do I really see what’s in her mind
Each time I think I’m close to knowing
She keeps on growing
Slipping through my fingers all the time

Sleep in our eyes, her and me at the breakfast table
Barely awake I let precious time go by
Then when she’s gone, there’s that odd melancholy feeling
And a sense of guilt I can’t deny
What happened to the wonderful adventures
The places I had planned for us to go
Well, some of that we did, but most we didn’t
And why, I just don’t know

Slipping through my fingers all the time
I try to capture every minute
The feeling in it
Slipping through my fingers all the time
Do I really see what’s in her mind
Each time I think I’m close to knowing
She keeps on growing
Slipping through my fingers all the time

Sometimes I wish that I could freeze the picture
And save it from the funny tricks of time

Slipping through my fingers…

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Overheard in her playhouse from two-year-old Molly this weekend: “Naynay, I’ll never leave you.”