I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: The Way Life Was

  • gold, frankincense and myrrh with a 21st century twist

    gold, frankincense and myrrh with a 21st century twist


    I’m a basic Bah, Humbug Christmas person and have been for years. I’m not clinically depressed during the holiday season, but neither am I joyful. I resist the pressure to shop ‘til I drop, but that isn’t limited to a particular time of the year, either. I’m considering the possibility I may suffer from borderline Scrooge disorder or at a minimum, Holiday Harrumphs.

     I miss my family at Christmas, the family that defined Christmas for me as a child. That family is gone as that time and place are gone, but the child inside me mourns their loss every time I hear “Silent Night” and other carols sung during this time of the year. We were musical people and much of our holiday revolved around music in our Southern Baptist churches where my mother was always responsible for the Christmas Cantata. Sometimes she played the piano for it so my dad could lead the church choir and sometimes she drafted another pianist so she could lead the choir herself. Regardless, music was the reason for the season for us and we celebrated the season in church.

    Coming home to Texas to live in 2010 has connected me once again with my DNA family, and that’s been an incredible experience that became part of the magic of Christmas for me the last two years. First cousins, second cousins, third cousins once removed and the people they’ve married and their children are good, and a few questionable, surprises for me. Gathering for a cousins’ Christmas potluck luncheon, going with cousins to the Montgomery Annual Cookie Walk, having cousins come to our home or visiting in their homes rekindled good memories of the times when our hair wasn’t white, our figures were slimmer and the great-grandparents at the table weren’t us. I see these relatives and I am a part of them; I feel good to belong to them at Christmas. Our conversations honor and celebrate our heritage and the ones who are no longer with us. We laughed and cried together because we were moved by our memories. This family was a Christmas gift.

    But just as the traditional story goes of the Wise Men who followed a bright light to Bethlehem bringing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the baby boy in the manger, Wise Women in my life  brought gifts that rocked my Christmas complacency. My wife surprised me with an early gift at Thanksgiving when I went home to her in South Carolina. It was worth its weight in gold to me: a western saddle made of leather that now rides a wooden quilt holder a Worsham Street neighbor gave me when she saw the saddle. Whenever I look at the saddle, I think of two of my favorite things, my wife who knew me well enough to buy this treasure for me and my days of riding horses as a child. I feel the love of the giver of this perfect gift.

    Frankincense was used in ancient times for medicinal and calming purposes including treatment for depression. Burning frankincense was also thought to carry prayers to heaven by people in those days.  One of the Wise Women in my life gave me my own version of frankincense last week when she bought a plane ticket to South Carolina for me to be with my wife for Christmas. I marvel at this generosity from a friend who surely loved me, a friend who chased away the potential Christmas blues. This gift came from prayers to heaven that were unasked but answered on the wings of a snow white dove called US Airways and the spirit that is the magic of Christmas in the heart of my friend.

    Myrrh is an Arabic word for bitter and it is the resin that comes from a tree that grows in the semi-desert regions of Africa and the Red Sea.  The Chinese used it for centuries to treat wounds and bruises and bleeding. The Egyptians used myrrh as an embalming oil for their mummies. Yesterday I received another gift that reminded me of myrrh – not the bitterness nor the embalming properties – but the unexpected present was a live blooming cactus plant that arrived at my house via a congenial UPS driver who I believe thought he was Santa Claus. When I opened the box and removed the moss packing per the enclosed instructions, I was stunned by the beauty of the pink blooms and the deep rich green of the plant. The gift came from another Wise Woman who is married to my cousin in Rosenberg, Texas and was an additional reminder of the magic that lives in Christmas. Every day I’ll see these blooms and think of my cousins who sent them with the healing power beauty affords us when we take a moment to consider it. I’ve always loved a Christmas cactus.

    Gold, frankincense and myrrh with a 21st century twist. The Christmas story of Mary and Joseph’s plight in the manger in Bethlehem has been told and re-told for thousands of years. Regardless of your belief, it is a tender tale of a family who welcomed a baby boy into a world of conflict and hardship but hoped he would somehow change it for the better. The same conflicts continue two thousand years later with hardships of every shape and description that continue to plague our families today, but we move on.  Sometimes forward, sometimes backward. But onward we go. And in this spirit of hope for a better world where peace becomes the norm and hardships are made more bearable, I abandon my Bah, Humbug for a trip to the Cookie Walk.

    picking just the right cookies at the Christmas Cookie Walk

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

    I published this piece for the first time in December, 2011. Today is December 07th which became a significant one in American history with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 that prompted America’s participation in WWII. My dad and his brother believed their bombs would fulfill the promise of a world where peace became the norm, but 78 years later the bombs continue. Hanukkah – Chanukah begins tonight at a particularly significant time during the Israel-Hamas War, a 21st. century tragedy of our inhumanity to each other as we still look for Wise Men and Women to lead us to peace.

    these little Texas boys served in Europe during WWII –

    their older sister waited for them to come home

  • 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.