I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: The Way Life Should Be

  • you can cage the singer, but not the song – Harry Belafonte (1927 – 2023)

    you can cage the singer, but not the song – Harry Belafonte (1927 – 2023)


    When I began my great escape from the familiar including what I felt at the time was the root of the war between good and evil that was constantly being waged within myself, a battle royale in which I never emerged the winner, the odyssey that began in Houston, Texas with the ultimate destination being the farthest place I could find on a map of the United States, I was twenty-two years old. The destination I chose was 3,000 miles across the country to the city of Seattle, Washington in the Pacific Northwest. The year was 1968.

    The circuitous route took two weeks and included two nights in Sin City, Las Vegas, Nevada. I had high hopes for evil to prevail in my inner warfare. When I arrived there late one night, my first thought was I had entered the land of the midnight sun – the lights were the brightest I had ever seen…the people hustling from casino to casino on the Strip, the hotel marquees, the energy exploding everywhere. This young lesbian from rural southeast Texas was overwhelmed but excited to be there.

    The next day I learned I could afford two shows that night in the hotels if I didn’t lose all my money at the blackjack tables in their casinos. It was a close call, but I managed to save just enough for one early show and one midnight show. The twenty-two year old lesbian opted for the midnight show at the Tropicana Hotel, the Folies Bergere, because someone had told her the women danced around with nothing but feathers on. That story turned out to be true. Mesmerizing.

    The early dinner show I saw was at Caesar’s Palace headlined by one of my favorite singers. His name was Harry Belafonte. I can’t remember the calypso songs or the other ballads he sang that night in my maiden Las Vegas show experience, but I remember to this day fifty-five years later his presence on the stage that belonged to him – the way he made me feel his music with him, that he sang especially for me. His smile was beautiful, contagious, somehow uplifting. The man moved with a power that would rival Moses parting the Red Sea; he was magnificent. He exuded a sexual confidence that made me think I might be straight. I loved him when he was young before I loved him more for who he became.

    This morning on the Today show Al Roker told a great story about Belafonte who at one point in his life wanted to rent an apartment in New York City. The landlord refused the lease because he was Black. Belafonte responded by buying the entire building and giving the penthouse to his friend Lena Horne.

    Mindful to the end that he grew up in poverty, Belafonte did not think of himself as an artist who became an activist, but an activist who happened to be an artist.

    “When you grow up, son,″ Belafonte remembered his mother telling him, “never go to bed at night knowing that there was something you could have done during the day to strike a blow against injustice and you didn’t do it.″

    Former Associated Press writer Mike Stewart contributed to this report dated October 25, 2023.

    Harry Belafonte was a living legend for his good deeds and blows struck against injustice, yet I will remember the most handsome man I ever saw in person in a time long ago and far away whose show was much more entertaining than the women wearing nothing but feathers.

    *********************

    Pretty and I will remember your passing on April 25th. Pretty’s mother died on that day in 1998. My mother died on that same day in 2012.

    Rest in peace, Harry Belafonte. As you once said, “You can cage the singer, but not the song.”

  • and now I’m seven and seventy

    and now I’m seven and seventy


    Six years ago in the summer of 2017 I posted my version of British poet A.E. Housman’s classic poem “When I was One and Twenty” published in 1896 in a collection called A Shropshire Lad. Housman, who was born in 1859 and died in 1936 at the age of seventy-seven, had partially funded the publication of A Shropshire Lad following a publisher’s rejection. In today’s jargon, we call that self-publishing. The book has been in continuous print since then so somewhere in London a poetry publisher in the last decade of the nineteenth century cursed himself on a Roman British tablet…or on something equally appropriate for turning down this classic.

    When I Was One-and-Twenty

    When I was one-and-twenty
           I heard a wise man say,
    “Give crowns and pounds and guineas
           But not your heart away;
    Give pearls away and rubies
           But keep your fancy free.”
    But I was one-and-twenty,
           No use to talk to me.
     
    When I was one-and-twenty
           I heard him say again,
    “The heart out of the bosom
           Was never given in vain;
    ’Tis paid with sighs a plenty
           And sold for endless rue.”
    And I am two-and-twenty,
           And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.
     
     
    When I was One and Twenty
    BY Sheila R. Morris

    When I was one and twenty, my father said to me,

     “Work hard, be kind to others, the truth will set you free;

    a penny saved is a penny earned was his advice to me.”

    But I was one and twenty, no use to talk to me.

    When I was one and twenty, my father said again,

    “Work harder, be smarter, but always be a friend;

    love family, serve country, life’s games are played to win.”

    And now I’m seven and seventy I hear my father say,

    “You did your best, forget the rest, your heart led all the way.”

    ***************************

    Tomorrow is my 77th. birthday which I have celebrated with Pretty and our two best friends Nekki and Francie in the south of France for ten remarkable days filled with delicious food, three days at the Masters 1000 Tennis Tournament in Monte Carlo, and a day at the Cannes Films Festival (or “pre-festival” according to Pretty who knows everything about pop culture) where I donated my last American dollars to a casino next to the pink carpet.

    The trip was on my short bucket list – a trip made possible through the generosity of our friends whose love and laughter made my bucket overflow with happiness. The time with Pretty is always special – luckily she came home with me but told me she would like to live in Nice for two years (if she could bring her granddaughters and their parents!).    

     

    (l. to r.) Francie, me, Pretty, Nekki – country come to town

    Pretty and me at Matisse Museum

    Francie and me grateful for bus

    after unexpected downpour leaving Matisse Museum

    Francie and Nekki on hotel rooftop

    Pretty happy with setting, lunch and the polka dot hat

    Thanks to our trip photographer Nekki for capturing some of our memory makers.

    And thanks to all of you, my readers and followers who have also become my friends, for sharing part of my journey over the past thirteen years. Impossible to imagine that time without you.

    Onward.

    *****************************

    Slava Ukraini. For the children.

  • easter, comes the resurrection

    easter, comes the resurrection


    Thirteen years ago this Easter my mother was in a secured memory care unit of the Atria Westchase assisted living complex in Houston, Texas. Pretty and I had just bought a second home in Montgomery, Texas so I could be closer to Mom as her dementia progressed. On that Easter Sunday in 2010 I arrived in time for a chapel service before lunch with my mom.  After lunch, well, here’s what happened…

    The traditional Easter egg hunt came to us mid-afternoon through the children of the staff members. The day was beautiful, and the fenced courtyard area was the perfect setting for a party. Those in our lunch group pushed their walkers or were wheeled outside into the bright sunlight, those who could sat in the Adirondack chairs under the portico. I met three other daughters who were visiting their mothers that day which made me glad I was there with my mother, too.

    The Latino women who were the caregivers for the memory care unit brought their children to enjoy the search for the pastel colored plastic eggs filled with candy in the tranquil setting of the facility’s outdoors. Eggs were hidden everywhere, including on and around the residents.  Jim, a tall, sad, unshaven man who never spoke and struggled to move opened the chocolate egg Rosa placed in his shirt pocket; he ate the candy before the kids arrived. No one tried to stop him including my mother who in days of yore would have surely reprimanded him in her best elementary school teacher tone.

    The small group of children burst into the courtyard with an exuberance all youngsters bring to filling an Easter basket. Ages ranged from four to twelve, with one six-month-old baby girl held by her mother. They were dressed in their Sunday best. Little boys wore ties with their jackets, little girls wore pretty spring dresses. It could’ve been a movie set, I thought, because they were strikingly beautiful shildren. They flew around grabbing eggs with gusto as their baskets filled quickly. They were noisy, laughing, talking – incredibly alive.

    It was the resurrection. For a few brief minutes, the stones were rolled away from the minds buried deep in the tombs of the bodies that kept them hidden. The children raced around the residents searching for treasures, exclaiming with delight when one was discovered. One little boy overlooked a blue egg under a wheel chair, and my mother tapped his shoulder to point it out to him. He was elated and flashed a brilliant smile at her. She responded with a look of pure delight. The smiles and the murmurings of the elderly were clear signs of their obvious joy that proclaimed the reality of Easter in those moments.  Hallelujah. We were all risen.

    Memories were made and lost that afternoon. The children who came to the place where their mothers worked to find eggs among the old people were unlikely to forget this day.  Years from now some will tell the stories of the Easter Egg Hunt with the Ancient Ones.  The stories will be as different as their own journeys will take them.  For my mother and her friends, no stories will be told because they won’t remember. My mother doesn’t know I was there for her on Easter this year which is not unexpected.  But I remember I was, and it is enough for both of us.

    I was born on another Easter Sunday morning in April 1946, and that makes the year 2010 my sixty-fourth Easter. I recollect a few of the earliest Easters from my childhood: sacred religious days for my loving Southern Baptist family who rarely missed a worship service on any Sunday of the year but never at Christmas or Easter. I also remember having a hard time finding eggs in the church hunts. My baskets never runneth over. But to be honest, in recent years Easter Sundays had been difficult to distinguish from any other day of the week.

    When I moved away from my family in Texas in my early twenties to explore my sexual identity, I didn’t know I’d be gone for forty years. I also had no way of knowing one of the costs of my freedom from family togetherness was my absence from family rituals.  Distance, travel time, money, job obligations, girlfriends—these were the obstacles I had to overcome for visits home. Or maybe they were just excuses. I usually made the trip home at Christmas and less frequently one more time in the summer. But never for Easter.

    This Easter was special for me because it was a day with no excuses necessary. I shared a Sunday sundae with my mother for lunch today at a table neither of us could have envisioned a few years before. Today was just the two of us, and if there were barriers between us that once seemed too impenetrable, they were now lost in the cobwebs of time.

    We were all risen, indeed.

    **************

    Happy Easter if you celebrate. Happy Passover if you celebrate. Ramadan Mubarak if you celebrate.

    (This post is an excerpt from my third book I’ll Call It like I See It)

  • Mexican food means family to Ella

    Mexican food means family to Ella


    Queso dip smeared by three year old Ella over the table top in our booth as she tried to helpfully clean the double digit droplets of white cheese on the space in front of her, bright red contents of one small salsa bowl completely dumped on the table by 14 month old Molly when she reached for water on the table from her booster seat pulled next to us – these were two of our more spectacular messes during one meal at our favorite Mexican restaurant this week. Eating out any meal with our granddaughters and their parents is always an adventure, but regular visits to Mexican restaurants bring their own special perils that require oversized tipping to our wait staff when we leave.

    Pretty, Drew and I took too long to finish our food to suit Ella this week, and she slipped out of the booth under the table to speed everyone along by standing next to Molly’s booster chair, feeding mushy refried beans on a fork to Molly who was overjoyed at the attention from her Big Sis as well as the attention from smiling waitresses that squeezed past the girls in the narrow aisle between booths. I was so focused on the precarious food delivery via fork from Ella to Molly I didn’t notice the middle-aged couple sipping margaritas minding their own business in the booth across the aisle from us until I heard Ella’s quiet attempt to be polite.

    “We’re a family,” she spoke to the surprised couple that turned toward her little girl voice. “This is my Naynay, that’s my Nana, he’s my daddy, and this is my baby sister Molly. My name is Ella.” She pointed to each of us as she introduced us with the names she knew, finishing by identifying herself. Drew and Pretty were talking about the Final Four, the restaurant was slammed, noisy, so I was the only member of Ella’s family that heard her announcement. I gave Ella a little hug, smiled at the couple who were the intended audience of her unsolicited conversation. The woman smiled briefly but then returned to her margarita.

    Molly wasn’t happy with this interruption in her food supply chain so she grabbed Ella’s hair and pulled it as hard as she could which prompted shrieks from Ella and quick action from Drew who lifted Molly from the booster while freeing Ella’s hair at the same time. Daddy to the rescue. Nana slid from the booth to help take the commotion outside.

    Dinner was over. Naynay asked for the check.

    Ella (l.) and Molly have queso in their DNA

    I tried to describe the incident to Pretty on the way home in the grannymobile that night – the joy I felt when I heard Ella’s understanding of what family meant to her, the confidence our little granddaughter had to share her family with others even though their response had been less than encouraging. It was a memory maker for me.

    Pretty agreed, smiled and asked how much I had tipped the waitress.

  • you old storyteller, you

    you old storyteller, you


    Ann Richards. Barbara Jordan. Stacey Abrams. Molly Ivins. Betha Day Morris. Ann, Barbara, Stacey, Molly and Betha shared a common gift, storytelling, honed from their various Texas influences. I call them the OGs of storytellers I would be happy to sit and listen to for hours on this rainy South Carolina day. Thanks to the magic of YouTube, I can still hear former Texas Governor Ann Richards, former US Representative Barbara Jordan, journalist and author Molly Ivins, political guru Stacey Abrams – the women we can celebrate during women’s history month for amazing achievements in their respective arenas.

    Betha Day Morris wasn’t captured on YouTube videos, or sadly, any videos of her storytelling, but while the more famous others inspired me as an adult, my paternal grandmother was my greatest personal Star Storyteller. I paid homage to her in the preface of my first book Deep in the Heart: A Memoir of Love and Longing.

    My roots are showing today – no, not those roots – my Texas roots which I never really outgrew. On my first visit to Texas from my new home in Seattle in 1968 where I had been for a grand total of three months out of my wise twenty-two years of life spent growing up in Texas, my daddy and I were quail hunting in a field in Fort Bend County when I began pontificating about the majesty, the grandeur of the Cascade Mountains of the Pacific Northwest. I had surveyed the lowcountry field of the southeastern coastal area as we followed Daddy’s hunting dogs Dab and Seth, making a remark something to the effect that the fields we were walking had to be some of the flattest lands God ever created. Nothing to see for miles except tall tan grass, why would anyone stay in Texas if they had the chance to move, even the quail might leave if they could. I went on and on. Dab and Seth ran with abandon but without purpose.

    My daddy who was a documented fourth generation son of the Republic of Texas stopped, turned to look back at his daughter he adored and said, “Sheila Rae, you can take the girl out of Texas, but you’ll never take Texas out of the girl.” He was, of course, right.

    I haven’t attempted to rival my grandmother’s stories, but I do have cousins who tell me I remind them of her. I consider that the highest compliment of my work. Stories and humor were the cornerstones of Betha’s life, and they became the bridges in mine.

    ************************

    Slava Ukraini. For the women.