I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: The Way Life Was

  • a man of letters – season 2 – episode 2

    a man of letters – season 2 – episode 2


    My dad’s mother, Betha Day Robinson Morris, was born October 23, 1903. In October of 1964 my thirty-nine-year-old father wrote a birthday letter to his mother who lived in Richards, Texas (eighty miles north of where he lived in Richmond, Texas). I call this one of my daddy’s deep in the heart moments – I can picture my grandmother’s tears when she read this from her youngest of three grown children. She was the one who treasured the words he wrote; I found this letter after her death in 1983.

    My personal favorite line in this letter is “You know when you have people who believe in you, you hate to let them down.”

    Daddy and Mama were thrilled about getting their first home together in 1964. They had eloped in 1945 when he returned from England at the end of WWII; I was born in 1946 ten months later. We lived in Richards with my maternal grandmother in her home that was less than a minute walk from my dad’s parents until I was thirteen years old. When my parents and I moved away from Richards, we lived in rental houses in Brazoria, Texas for five years. They moved to another rental house in Richmond when I left for college; Daddy and Mama got jobs in the school district there.

    The American dream was alive and well in the fall of 1964.

    Daddy and my grandmother at the back steps of her home circa 1943

    Does anyone have a favorite line in the letter?

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

    Slava Ukraini. For the children.

  • the man in the moon

    the man in the moon


    One of my paternal grandmother’s favorite euphemisms when she became exasperated by the ignorance of someone who had trampled on her last nerve was “he didn’t have any more sense than the man in the moon.” Ma’s euphemisms were more like proclamations that I took to be absolute truth, which meant I had little regard for the man in the moon of my childhood. Yesterday I saw him through different eyes.

    Nana and I took care of our two young granddaughters, four year old Ella and twenty-two month old Molly, while their parents enjoyed a day of food, friends and college football. Activities had been fast and furious for the girls – Nana and I had struggled to keep pace, but late in the afternoon they settled outside playing together in the sandbox where unfortunately an argument over a pink shovel caused a meltdown by Molly which sent Ella scrambling to a small hammock swing nearby. The next thing I knew Molly had climbed in the hammock with Ella (Nana gave her a leg up), and both of them were laughing while Nana pushed them, twirling them around like a ride at the state fair.

    As twilight came too soon for the girls who cried Nana, go higher, go higher I had a Thanksgiving moment for these three: my wife who shared the past twenty-two years with me and the two little girls whose lives added another dimension for our family.

    Finally, Nana stopped swinging the small hammock, and Ella jumped out of the swing. Hey, everybody, I see the moon, she exclaimed with delight. Naynay, come see the moon, she insisted. I left my chair on the deck to do as she told me because that’s how I roll with this four year old. Nana picked up Molly to stand next to Ella who pointed to the moon for her younger sister. Molly said moon, moon while her face beamed brighter than the moonlight.

    I told the girls a story about a man in the moon, but the man I saw with them through their eyes was a kind man – very smart – who simply stayed in the sky to watch over us. Why? Ella asked. Good question, I replied.

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

    “The oak trees were alive with color in the midst of the evergreens. Bright red and yellow leaves catching the sunlight as Daddy and I walked through the brush early that Thanksgiving morning. The smell of the pines was fresh and all around us. We didn’t speak, but this was when I felt most connected to my father. Nature was a bond that united us and the gift that he gave me. And not just in those East Texas woods. He envisioned the whole earth as my territory and set me on my path to discovery. In 1958, this was remarkable for a girl’s father…Perhaps, though, it is the love and closeness of those family ties that leave the sights and sounds that last a lifetime.” (from Deep in the Heart: A Memoir of Love and Longing)

    Thanksgiving blessings to you and your family from ours in South Carolina

  • Happy Birthday to the oldest Huss Brother!

    Happy Birthday to the oldest Huss Brother!


    Oscar was almost three years old when he signed this card for me at Halloween in 2011

    These pictures of Oscar and his younger brother Dwight who would be one year old the following January made me smile when I first saw them twelve years ago, and they continue to add smiles for me when I see them today. I named the little boys The Fabulous Huss Brothers when we lived three houses down from the Huss family during the time Pretty and I had a second home in Texas from 2010 – 2014. They were my first introduction to being a grandmother; their biological grandparents lived great distances from the boys so I shared some fun times with them as well as the closeness of family life that helped make my time away from Pretty and South Carolina a memorable experience.

    Every year their mother Becky sends me a Mother’s Day card from the boys (now three brothers with the birth of George in 2012):

    the Fabulous Huss Brothers in 2023

    Happy Fifteenth Birthday, Oscar! I hope you have your best year ever at school, with your extracurricular activities, with friends new and old – and especially at home with your family. Be kind to your mom, dad and those two brothers, too. You are loved. The whole earth is your territory. Explore.

  • ’tis the season – too harsh?

    ’tis the season – too harsh?


    Thanksgiving is still my favorite holiday because it is the most resistant to crass commercialism.  Halloween and Christmas have become impostors that pave the path to New Year’s Eve, but Thanksgiving remains the holiday for celebrating family and friends.  It is the lull between two storms that blow powerful winds of spending, of buying more of what we don’t need in larger quantities.

    Ouch. Someone just stomped on Halloween and Christmas with both feet – who could that negative naysayer be, and what did she say next?

    The march is on, and good cheer has a price.  Merry gentlemen, God doesn’t rest ye.  O Holy Night, you’re not really silent.  As a matter of fact, you’re all about the noise of cars, planes and people in a hurry to get somewhere.  It’s time to travel; the highways and airports are hubbubs of activity.  We are rocking around the Christmas tree.  Every creature is stirring on the night before, during, and after Christmas.  Hallelujah.  Let’s make it a chorus.

    Oh my goodness. Someone swallowed a Bah Humbug pill that turned her into an old “Eleanor-eezer” Scrooge type with too many tunes swirling through the memory banks in her brain. What kind of person would write this, and when did she write it?

    To no one’s surprise I am the guilty writer, and I published this piece on November 10, 2011 – exactly twelve years ago today. This is neither a retraction nor an aha moment with a total change in my annual holiday philosophies, but hopefully I can admit when softer, less judgmental tones are more appropriate.  

    Sandwiched between Halloween and Christmas is the poor relation, Thanksgiving.  On this lesser holiday, I am thankful for the memories of my family and our life before cell phones interrupted us while we feasted at the tables of my grandmothers.  I am thankful for a grandmother who got up in the wee hours of Thursday mornings to put a turkey in a large cooker that was used only twice a year.  I can still smell the aroma that permeated our whole house by the time we got up on Thanksgiving morning.  The turkey was on its way to perfection.  I am grateful to that grandmother for working ten hours a day, six days a week so that we would have a roof over our heads and food to eat.  I feel her love today as I felt it then, but now I know how fortunate I was to have her in my life—and I also know that not everyone is so lucky.

    Yes, this was also in the post twelve years ago today, and I am thankful for the softer tones, warmer images, more understanding of the challenges families face during holiday seasons when not everyone shares the abundance of love I remember or even the luxury to ponder the memories. Not all those who ponder are lost, but we need one holiday to call our own. I choose Thanksgiving. 

  • Lessons from a Butterfly Concerning Casualties

    Lessons from a Butterfly Concerning Casualties


    Five years ago in August of 2018 I published this article I found when I determined to look for inspiration among more than 900 past posts over a dozen years of blogging. More specifically I looked for anything I’d written about “casualties” because it’s a common term the media glibly tosses around in reports about loss of human life in war, natural disasters, mass shootings, epidemics – which seem to multiply with each news cycle. This morning the focus was on the Israel – Hamas War that has already resulted in staggering numbers of death with estimates of more than 1,400 Israelis and more than 10,000 Gaza citizens. What I found when I listened today was how easy it is to be swept up in the totals and to forget that each casualty also represents one person: one man or one woman or one child. A butterfly reminded me on a hot summer day that the cost of individual grief is immeasurable.

    One week ago today I was doing my pool exercises when I saw something so very extraordinary I took a calculated risk to retrieve my cell phone from the buggy it rests in without disturbing the amazing sight.

    butterfly on caterpillar body – gently folding and unfolding wings

    as it moved its legs across the still corpse

    The carcasses of two recently deceased caterpillars lay next to the steps where I entered the pool every day. I scarcely paid any attention to them when I moved down the steps and into the water. After all, the bodies of caterpillars that were casualties of the chlorine were common and a dime a dozen, weren’t they.

    I also paid very little attention to the small dark colored butterfly that flew around me in wide circles for about 15 minutes until it came to rest on one of the caterpillar bodies lying on the cement next to the pool steps.

    I was so startled at the sight that I stopped my pacing to watch as the butterfly established a kind of rhythm – opening and closing its wings while it moved its legs back and forth across the dead caterpillar. I felt like I was an intruder in a private ritual of grief reserved for these tiny creatures that made our human tears a poor substitute. And then I began to think the butterfly didn’t fly away from me because it sensed my shared sorrow.

    Today, exactly one week later, I was on the last leg of my routine early morning walk around the pool when I saw this remarkable sight.

    a beautiful large blue black butterfly landed right in front of me

    This gorgeous creature flew next to the pool steps, landed, and began to open and close its wings just as the one had last week. I sat down in my buggy seat to better observe what I believe was…what?…the same butterfly from last week…another butterfly…what does that matter really…

    What I learned was a powerful lesson about the importance of all creatures great and small, the individuality of grief, the exquisite beauty in hope embraced by a spirit willing to take flight following great loss.

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

    For all children everywhere.