I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Slice of Life

  • an extra special Tuesday


    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

     

  • Father Goose Nursery Rhymes


    (funny-pictures.picphotos.net)

    Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme (circa 1725)

    Pretty good one, Mother Goose – your rhymes reflected your times.

    As for Father Goose, that rascal, what might he write in 2017?

    Little Jack Kelly

    Sat watching telly

    Eating his fish and chips;

    He answered his phone

    Because he was home

    Then said with a groan,

    “I’m it.”

    Best wishes to General Kelly in his new role as Chief of Staff. One week and counting.

    Stay tuned, sports fans.

     

     

  • ’til the river runs dry


    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.

     

  • Spike speaks


    Hello. My name is Spike, and I don’t ever get to say anything in cyberspace. It’s not that I don’t have something to say. It’s just that nobody ever asks me what I think.

    And I think plenty. That’s what I do best. Think. In this family thinking is a lost art and talking occupies center stage. Talking, in my opinion, is overrated.

    For example, nobody has ever asked me my opinion on summer. In my opinion, summer is hot.

    I don’t get the pool thing…

    Normally I enjoy a refreshing dip in water, but this water ain’t right. It smells funny. I don’t trust any water that smells funny.

    So take me back, country roads, to the place I belong which is inside my air conditioned house…where I can think in peace and quiet…

    but not always in solitude…

    Oh, well. You can’t have everything, if you stop to think about it.

     

     

     

  • the mickey mouse club


    Who’s the leader of the Club that’s made for you and me…

    M-I-C     K- E- Y

    M-O-U-S-E

    I’ve made the mistake of watching the Senate as it goes through the histrionics of repealing the Affordable Care Act for the gazillionth. time. Yesterday, I had the nagging suspicion I had seen this played out somewhere else before.

    Attention, Baby Boomers from the 1950s. Sing along with me.

    If you can remember the fun and games afternoons with Mickey and the gang,

    you have a great memory

    we had our clubhouse –

    just like the US Senate has today

    our Head Mouseketeer Jimmie was a

    lot more fun than the new

    Senate Head Mouseketeer Mitch

    If only our Senators were as congenial as Mickey and Minnie, I wonder what could get done?

     We need more women in the new Senate Club

    The new Senate Club represents

    the best interests of all the people in the country,

    wouldn’t you think?

    sigh…Disney was a deal-maker, too…

    And now it’s time to say goodbye to all our fam-i- ly

    M-I-C see you real soon

    K-E-Y   why? because we like you!

    M-O-U-S-E

    Most of these Senators can remember the Mickey Mouse Club of yesteryear – maybe some of them were even card-carrying members like me – but they’ve forgotten Head Mouseketeer Jimmie’s admonitions to treat each other with respect and kindness. The new Club thrives on disrespect and meanness. The new Head Mouseketeer Mitch has gotten lost in a wilderness of wheeling and dealing that will cost many Americans the opportunity for adequate health care.

    Pretty is one of those Americans who has health insurance through the Affordable Care Act and will have none if it’s repealed. Multiply that by 32 million lives. I can’t. I can’t even imagine the ultimate price for the possibilities being discussed on the floor of the Senate today.

    Maybe that’s why I’ve resorted to tunes from the years when my best friends were Spin and Marty.

    P.S. The views expressed today in no way reflect the views of Mickey and Minnie Mouse or any of the Mouseketeers pictured. The pictures are copyrighted by the Disney Company more than 60 years ago.