I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: The Way Life Should Be

  • Epilogue For Deep in the Heart Revisited

    Epilogue For Deep in the Heart Revisited


    I find it almost as difficult to leave Richards at age sixty as I did when I was thirteen. The family and friends of that small town live in vivid memories that come easier to me than what I had for lunch yesterday. Alas, I realized in writing these stories that I am now the age my grandparents were when I left Richards. And I know, for sure, that they were old. I never returned to live in Richards, but my dad was true to his word, and we visited there frequently after we moved away. When I got my first car in college, Richards was my number-one destination. And so, it has remained for the rest of my life. Now though, when I visit, my first stop is Fairview Cemetery, the beautiful resting place for almost all the family and friends in this book. The setting is a hill overlooking rolling pastures, with cattle grazing nearby. Each time I visit I hear the voices of my childhood and am grateful for that time and place and those loved ones. And often I hear, echoed across the years: “Sheila Rae, it’s getting late. You better come in before it gets too dark.”

     For my birthday in April this year, my friend Meghan gave me a reading with an oracle who felt I needed to return to my earlier writings, read them again, and try to determine whether they still say what I want to say. Deep in the Heart: A Memoir of Love and Longing was published in 2007 when I was sixty-one years old. Much has changed in the past sixteen years.

    The book is a collection of stories about coming of age during the mid twentieth century in a small town called Richards located in rural Grimes county in southeast Texas – the stories of a young girl who could identify her feelings of being different without being able to name them, a little girl who loved her dysfunctional family that treasured its Texas heritage. My dad whom I adored was famous for declaring you can take the girl out of Texas, but you can’t take Texas out of the girl when I moved three thousand miles away to Seattle as a young adult. A subsequent move to South Carolina several years later brought me closer to Texas but still a thousand miles from home.

    While I have made my home in South Carolina for the past fifty years, I continued to cling to my Texas roots with a brief actual reconnection to them from 2010 – 2014 when my wife Teresa and I bought a home in Montgomery to help with my mother’s care. My mother had severe dementia, a condition that required placing her in a Memory Care Unit of an assisted living facility in Houston. Montgomery was eighteen miles south of Richards so in a very real sense I finally did go home again.

    During that four-year sabbatical we purchased our own headstone in the Fairview Cemetery I mentioned in my Epilogue; I had it placed below my mother and father’s stone in our section of the cemetery that holds the dust and ashes of family and friends. I refused to leave deep in the heart of Texas with Fairview’s overlook of rolling pastures and cattle grazing nearby.

    Sadly, Texas in 2023 is now the single villain capable of taking Texas out of me. The culture of gun violence within the state that provides opportunities for daily shootings, mass murders, bluebonnets replaced by the red blood flowing in the killing fields across the state, politicians who are dependent on revenues from gun shows, the unhumanitarian crisis at the border with Mexico as immigrants from around the globe seek asylum in America – all conspire to drown out the voices of my childhood described in this first memoir.  It’s getting later, and I’m afraid of the call to come in from the dark that once was a sweet melody but now has an ominous refrain.

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    For the children.

  • and then there were these Mother’s Day Moments in 2023

    and then there were these Mother’s Day Moments in 2023


    Number One Son Drew and Pretty Too Caroline along with their daughters Ella and Molly treated Pretty a/k/a Nana and me a/k/a Naynay to a Mother’s Day brunch Saturday at the Luzianna Purchase restaurant in Irmo, the second year in a row we have had that family fun there. Hm. I think I smelled tradition when we were eating, but possibly that was the aroma of the best French toast I ever had. Everyone enjoyed the food – I sat next to fifteen month old Molly whose little teeth allow her to taste whatever looks inviting which, for her at this moment, is everything.

    Naynay, can I please try your French toast?

    Three and a half year old Ella lost interest in our conversations but never loses interest in her Nana’s phone. Endless entertainment for her although her parents, ahem, prefer limited cell phone viewing. Honestly, where does that child get her phone obsession, Nana and Naynay?

    Ella took this photo of her mother using Nana’s phone

    At some point during brunch, Ella asked us if she could come to our house when we finished eating. Of course, the answer was yes so she came home with us for the afternoon. The energy level picked up steam when the tornado that is our granddaughter mixed with our barking dogs who announce but try to ignore her presence. Although the afternoon sun was warm with temperatures in the mid 80s, the pool was still too cold for jumping in so Ella had to settle for playing with her toys which we have had on our screen porch for her (and now Molly) for the past three years.

    The girls have tons of toys at their house, but when they come to our screen porch they make their own outdoor games with empty pill bottles, bandaid boxes, a tennis ball, homemade wooden car, a green frog that once croaked but the squeaker gave up, and a box of cards that can be admired but too difficult to open. Ella created elaborate stories while she filled the pill bottles with pool water from the shallow steps to make “pretend” sodas for us while we kept watch. She also was happy to carry cold water bottles and peanut butter crackers to the two men who were working on replacing the wood on our deck. Busy, busy, busy.

    I told her we were so happy to have her visits but I was afraid there’d come a time when she would have her own friends to play with and she wouldn’t be interested in visiting her Nana and Naynay. She looked at me and said with all sincerity, “When I get bigger I’ll have my own car and can drive to see you.” End of story…

    By far the highlight of Ella’s time with us was when Nana took her to the front yard and let her run back and forth through the sprinkler before we loaded her into the car for the trip to take her home. She loves water as much as Pretty does, and she squealed with laughter, with delight, with the pleasure of getting soaked and announced this was her best time ever and didn’t I just love what she was doing?

    Of course, I said yes.

    our beautiful Mother’s Day gift from the kids

    Pretty and I appreciate our family time and understand how fortunate we are to love and be loved by them. We also know Mother’s Day can be a reminder of loss for other mothers, daughters, sisters, grandmothers – losses that leave vacuums in our hearts. I remember a hymn that went something like now the day is over, night is drawing nigh, shadows of the evening steal across the sky. For this one day let the shadows bring us comfort and peace with the possibility of love to fill the vacuums.

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    Slava Ukraini. For the mothers and their children.

  • making fudge with my mother

    making fudge with my mother


    Upon the suggestion of an astrologer I met for the first time this last week as a birthday gift from my friend Meghan, I began to re-read my memoirs beginning with the first one published in 2007. Deep in the Heart: A Memoir of Love and Longing was described by author and poet Ed Madden as a story of what life was for a little butch tomboy growing up behind the Pine Curtain of East Texas in the mid-twentieth century. I still like this little girl I wrote about in 2007, and I adore my maternal grandmother Dude as well as my paternal grandmother Ma today as I did then. Fifteen years later I feel more loving toward my mother the fudge maker – perhaps the result of sharing the last four years of her life as she struggled with dementia from 2008 – 2012. The difficulties in the relationships between mothers and daughters are universal, although they may hopefully be set aside at least once a year on Mother’s Day.

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    Slava Ukraini. For the mothers.

  • the eyes of texas – and the rest of the world – are upon you

    the eyes of texas – and the rest of the world – are upon you


    A thirty-eight year old man accused of murdering five neighbors in Cleveland, Texas was captured in a smaller Texas town called Cut and Shoot that was less than 20 miles from where the crime happened after a massive four day manhunt by a collection of law enforcement organizations.The man lived next door to the victims which included two women aged 21 and 31 respectively, a 25 year old woman and her 9 year old son, and an 18 year old young man. According to the 9 year old’s father, the neighbor walked into their home armed with an AR-15 rifle and began shooting after an altercation between them over a crying baby in his home and the neighbor’s shooting practice in the next door yard.

    According to data published by Caroline Covington on July 28, 2022 in the Texas Tribune, Texans purchased more than 1.6 million guns in 2021 which was about 1 gun for every 14 adults in the state. Concurrently in 2021 the Texas legislature passed new laws allowing the open carry of handguns without a license to carry those guns under certain conditions per information provided by the Texas State Law Library. The Wild, Wild West of Hollywood westerns in the 1940s and 50s had returned to those thrilling days of yesteryear but the guns of the 21st. century were more powerful, more accessible, able to kill innocent people much quicker than the ones used in the 1952 Gary Cooper film High Noon.

    When Pretty and I had a second home on Worsham Street in Montgomery, Texas from 2010 – 2014 we drove through Cut and Shoot whenever we made one of our countless thousand mile trips between South Carolina and Texas. During that time we used the Cut and Shoot post office as a sign we were almost to Conroe which meant we were less than an hour from Worsham Street. Even our dogs sensed the two day drive south and west was nearing the end when we slowed for the small town speed limit and stopped for several red lights there.

    Now the name Cut and Shoot is infamous as the town where the Cleveland mass shooter was captured. The little town that got its name from a fight between two (who’s suprised?) religious groups, the home of ostensibly the only person with any claim to fame (professional heavyweight boxer Roy Harris) would achieve notoriety as the place where a middle-aged man with an AR-15 who killed five of his younger neighbors in Cleveland was found hiding in a closet in a house there.

    I really don’t care if the people killed and/or the killer were shades of black, brown, white, or mix-ish; what I do care about is that somebody somewhere had an AR-15 rifle and a temper. Everyone has a temper to some degree – even our fifteen month old granddaughter Molly gets mad when she hears the word No, and she feels free to act out by throwing whatever is in her hand to the ground as hard as she can.

    But not everyone has an AR-15 rifle, and in my opinion not everyone should.

    Ban the damn things. Ban them all.

  • one final birthday card – and gift

    one final birthday card – and gift


    The card was given to me by my good friend Bing at dinner in our favorite Mexican restaurant last night where she and another good friend Meghan treated Pretty and me to a delicious meal. Yummy!

    The card came with this book for our granddaughters – nothing is better than a delightful “message” book for an activist’s granddaughters. I loved it – and will love reading it to them. If you haven’t read it, you must. The words of wisdom work for all of us regardless of our ages.

    I must say thank you to everyone who has bombarded me with good wishes during what became my 77th. birthday month! You have made this a super time, as our three year old Ella says when she reaches for hyperbole. I couldn’t say it better myself.

    Onward.

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    Slava Ukraini. For the children.