I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

storytelling for truth lovers

  • a prize fighter named Pain


    Reaching deep, deeper, deepest into my archives this time with a story that seems appropriate for our collective contemporary selves across the world. I offer this post first published here in September, 2011. I lifted it from my third book, I’ll Call It Like I See It, which is how my blog got its name. 

    Let me introduce you to my new friend Pain…well, not really new…and not actually a friend. I’m learning to live with him, but he’s a stubborn, persistent adversary.  I must have known him intermittently through my more than six decades of life, although the encounters were brief and unremarkable.  Painful episodes are the children of Pain.

    I met Pain himself three and a half years ago.  The mature, grown-up Pain.  He came to my body through the hardest part of me—my head.  He moved into the right side of my scalp and down my forehead to encircle my right eye and cheek.  He followed the nerves that travel through my face.  He had a cute little name that rhymes with tingles.  Shingles.  Such a harmless name for the devil who rules my life. He moved into his new home with the excitement of a pioneer staking a claim for a homestead in the Wild West during the glory days when every vista was unexplored territory.

    Pain is a hard worker who never sleeps.  He is relentless in his pursuit of control and domination.  Medicines amuse him with their efforts to ease his grip. He is like a prize fighter whose gloves are cinched for eighteen rounds. Medication sends him to the corner to be renewed, but he’s up and ready when the bell sounds. He is a bold opponent who stoops to cheap shots during the fray.

    When the sun goes down at the end of the day, Pain only works harder; sleep and rest flee from him.  He is their biggest fear, their worst enemy.  He loves the darkness of the night because it reminds him of his own nature. Pain pummels me with a ferocious pounding unmatched by mortal foes.  I understand him better now, and I know his tactics.  I know he leaves after a long fight to make me think I’ve won.  I step into the center of the ring with my hands held high in a victory salute.  It’s clear—Pain is the loser.

    But then he returns.  Sometimes to the head that now bears the scars of our warfare, sometimes with a fatigue that makes movement impossible because I have hit a wall which may as well be made of concrete.  Always to my eyes – which blur, burn and water incessantly as they produce protein deposits splattering the annoying eyeglasses essential  to replace the contact lens I used to wear.

    As I grow older and my immune system weakens, Pain appears stronger and more powerful.  I have a rendezvous with Pain, as the poet once said of Death.  I meet him on whatever battlefields he chooses, and we engage in our struggle in quiet isolation.  The stakes are high in this duel with no seconds available to offer assistance, no valiant rescue on the horizon.  It is just Pain and me.

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    I’m sure I don’t say welcome to my new followers often enough, but I appreciate everyone who clicks “follow”  – you all give me encouragement to carry on. Many of you live on other continents that are foreign to me; but our shared humanity, particularly in this time of Covid-19, connects us across the oceans. Thank you all for taking time to read and reflect.

    Stay tuned.

     

  • ships that don’t come in


    “To those who stand on empty shores and spit against the wind
    and those who wait forever for ships that don’t come in.”

    Joe Diffie (d. 3-29-20) recorded these words written by Paul Nelson and Dave Gibson in 1992; I hear them several times a week on my favorite country legends radio station. Each time I listen to them I am transported to the 1950s to vivid childhood memories of my maternal grandmother who told me all the things we would do when her ship came in. We would take wonderful trips from our little town in Grimes County, Texas to exotic faraway places like Maryland to visit her brother Arnold with his wife Amelia and California to visit her favorite sister Orrie in Los Angeles. We would stop at the See’s Candy store in Los Angeles to buy all the chocolates we could eat. We could travel whenever we wanted because she wouldn’t have to clerk at Mr. Witt’s General Store anymore. She would buy my mother a new piano and my dad a new car. She would buy me anything I wanted. Life would be good.

    I will be as old this month as my grandmother was when she was buried on my birthday in 1972 at the age of seventy-four. She believed her ship never came in, and I understand why. Much of her life she stood on empty shores where she must have felt she was spitting against the wind, powerless in the face of poverty and its constraints, overwhelming loneliness when my parents and I moved out of her home in 1958, severe depression with sporadic shock treatments for therapy after we left her, debilitating medications she couldn’t afford. Spitting against the wind.

    Yet for me, life with my grandmother was a ship that did come in. During those ten years I lived with her she was the center of warmth, love and laughter for me. I learned to love playing games like dominoes from her and her mother, my great-grandmother, who visited every summer. I learned to laugh at pranks which made no sense to me because she thought they were hilarious when she played them. I learned to love the smell of her pies baking in the oven on Sunday mornings, the aroma of her kolaches baking on Sunday afternoons. I learned to fall asleep lying next to her in bed where she fell exhausted every night after rising before dawn for her Bible study and then standing on her feet for ten hours selling merchandise at Mr. Witt’s general store.

    I learned the ships that come in for some people are the same ones that never come in for others.

    So here’s to all the soldiers who ever died in vain,

    The insane locked up in themselves, the homeless down on Main

    To those who stand on empty shores and spit against the wind

    And those who wait forever for ships that don’t come in.

    Here’s to Joe Diffie, an American country singer, who died in the coronavirus pandemic at the age of 61. Rest in peace, Joe.

    Stay tuned.

     

     

     

  • true confessions


     I find the planet to be spinning out of control on a different axis at a very high rate of speed in the past thirty-one days since the beginning of Women’s History Month. I usually post four to five times monthly, but I hoped I could offer my readers in cyberspace a few minutes of escape from the pandemic in these most trying times with stories of ordinary women who became extraordinary in a variety of circumstances.  Besides, who am I kidding? I needed the escape, too.  True Confessions was first published in May, 2016 – I’m ending my WHM with it without apology because it’s a part of my history with writing as well as my history with Pretty. No agenda. Just enjoy. 

    When Mrs. Lucille Lee taught me how to read in the first grade at the Richards public school, I was so excited I tried to read anything and everything that had words: newspapers, magazines, comic books about Superman or Archie and Jughead, signs, billboards,The Hardy Boys mysteries, The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, The Bobbsey Twins in Tulip Land, Cherry Ames, Tom Swift Jr; histories of the adventures of Wyatt Earp, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Gene Autry the singing cowboy, Daniel Boone, Annie Oakley, Sam Houston and well, you get the picture.

    I asked for extra books to take home from school, and I was the first person on the steps of the Grimes County Bookmobile every month – I always checked out the maximum magic number of four. I read whenever I took a break from playing outside or hid from my mother who routinely expected me to be practicing the piano since she had the self imposed unfortunate task of teaching me to play. Do not disturb. I was busy reading. I had left hot humid Richards, Texas for exotic places like snowy New England to check on my new friends Jo, Amy, Beth and Meg, the March girls in Little Women, who were even cooler than the Bobbsey twins. I cried when Beth died.

    One day I read a magazine article entitled “How do You Tell Your Child there is no Santa Claus?” I was mortified when my mother confirmed that he wasn’t real. I was probably nine years old at the time and had heard rumors at school but knew for a fact he was real because I’d seen him on the news on television every Christmas. The news was the ultimate standard bearer of truth.  Now two  heroes bit the dust at once: Santa Claus and CBS reporter Dan Rather at KHOU. Shattering. What was left to believe in? Who could be trusted? At least I knew Lucy and Ricky Ricardo would always be together with Fred and Ethel Mertz. I took comfort in that.

    Somewhere along the line in the next sixty years reading became less about fun and more about school, studying, work –  keeping up with the financial markets which in the waning years of the twentieth century moved at warp speed in a gazillion directions. Reading, for me,  moved from printed pages to computer screens and power point presentations. Gradually over my forty years working with numbers in some form or another, I lost my love for words. When I came home at night, the last thing I wanted to do was read.

    The vicissitudes of life intervened, as they will according to my daddy, and I fell in love with a woman who loved to read almost as much as she enjoyed playing tennis. We met in her bookstore Bluestocking Books in the early 90s. She had a wonderful feminist bookstore located on Gervais Street in the Vista in downtown Columbia before the Vista was a hot spot and yet, her store became a gathering place for the fledgling LGBT community. My interest in books was immediately revived.

    Alas, Bluestocking closed after two and a half years, but my friendship with the owner who was also a passionate lesbian activist endured. We were both involved in other long term personal relationships for the next seven years, but the two relationships fell apart for different reasons at the turn of the century. Pretty, the bookstore owner, and I joyfully discovered we had passions for more than equal rights as the 21st. century began.

    When we bought our first house together, we had to have bookshelves built in the living room and her office. That set the precedent for every house since then. Built-in bookshelves, bookcases of every size and description in every room at Casa de Canterbury in the front house, bookcases lining the rooms of the little back house we call our bodega. Still we had books on the floor, books on every piece of furniture that has a surface – books, books, books. Plus, Pretty read every night. While I watched TV and played poker in cyberspace, she read books.

    Finally, after six years of being surrounded by books, I decided part of my life was missing. But, the interesting thing is that rather than start reading one of the countless books at my disposal, I took a writing course in December, 2006. Pretty encouraged me and of course, I wanted to do well. I wrote a little story about a revival meeting in my Southern Baptist church where I heard a preacher rant and rave about homosexuals going to hell. The teacher liked it, and so did Pretty. That story became the chapter Payday Someday in Deep in the Heart: A Memoir of Love and Longing that was published in November, 2007.

    Blogs, books, magazines – once again I have a love affair with words. This time around, though, the words are mine.  I write them. I own them. They are sometimes well received by readers, sometimes they aren’t but they come from a reservoir built steadily by years  of dams focusing on numbers until finally the dams broke when the words overflowed.  Apparently, I am unable to stop them from tumbling onto a computer screen that sometimes becomes the printed page.

    True confessions: I still don’t read much. People often invite me to become their Goodreads friend; I love the site so I always say yes, but I’m a terrible friend. In spite of that, I started reading At Seventy: A Journal by May Sarton this week because Pretty laid it on our coffee table and because I think May Sarton is one of the best writers of the last century. She happened to be an out lesbian but refused to be called a “lesbian writer.” Whatever the label, she wrote fabulous letters to her friends and family. Since she answered her mail religiously every morning, I wish I’d written to her.

    Letter writing is a lost art, but I suppose Facebook and other social media render it superfluous. My sense is that blog comments are like mini-letters and I love the interaction with those of you who are my followers. If I fail to respond to your comment, I didn’t see it. I am thankful for every reader.  Do not disturb. Somewhere someone is reading.

    Thank goodness for the Bluestocking Bookstore owner who continues to inspire my love for words – and for her. I think I should marry that woman. Oops! I forgot. I did.

    Stay safe and stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

  • my new BFF Ellen


    In November, 2013 when I first published this post I was struggling with losses so overwhelming I felt like a stranger in my own skin. If I had had a voice, that voice would have been the lone one crying in a wilderness of pain. I needed a friend and luckily found one every afternoon for an hour when the always smiling, invariably sunny Ellen DeGeneres walked into my life with an opening monologue that never failed to make me laugh. Today I believe laughter is still the best medicine for whatever ails any of us – pandemic raging without or within.  

    I have a new relationship with a younger lesbian who shares my core values, is wicked smart and witty, too – a huge plus in my list of desirable qualities for long term hooking up.  We get together every afternoon at 3 o’clock, laugh at silly jokes she makes and dance to the music played by her favorite DJ for the day. This girl puts me to shame on the dance floor, but she never makes fun of my moves.

    We only meet for an hour, but that hour is jam packed with top entertainers from all over the world who are thrilled to visit with my BFF. Of course, you know who my new girlfriend is because she’s probably one of your BFFs too. Ellen. As in DeGeneres.

    Oh yeah. Ellen and I go way back, but we’ve had a kind of off-again/on-again relationship since we first discovered each other in the mid 1990s. I let her do her TV shows and helped her find Nemo back in the day; we saw each other briefly backstage at the Oscars and Emmys she hosted. But I have to admit I put her on the back burner when she started her own talk show eleven seasons ago.

    I mean I didn’t totally forget her, but I was in a relatively new relationship with another woman who required my full attention plus one of those high-pressure careers that kept me in an office during my usual Ellen liaisons.  So we languished…

    Until this year. The unlikely year of 2013. Why unlikely, you ask? Well first of all, it’s an odd numbered year and if you’ve been with me for a long time, you know I never think anything good takes place in an odd numbered year. Unless there’s an exceptional turn around in the last two months, I have to say my instincts of foreboding have been spot on.

    That’s what I love about my getting back together again with Ellen. I swear the girl lifts me up. As Andra Day sings, “I’ll rise up, I’ll rise like the day. I’ll rise up, I’ll rise unafraid. I’ll rise up, and I’ll do it a thousand times again.” Tell it, sister.

    Ellen is a rare commodity in the world these days. She’s an optimist who wants to spread the spirit of love and hope to a people who need to look at life with renewed faith in the kindness of each other. Her generosity touches the hearts of the hardened, encourages them to try again. Give each other a chance.

    So for the naysayers who shake their heads and mutter Oh well, anybody can be nice for an hour, I say shame on you. My BFF Ellen rocks and you’ll agree if you take the time to get to know her – which is kind of like what we should be doing with everybody else we meet.  For an hour or even longer.

    Stay tuned.

  • Liz Was Hotter than a Two Dollar Pistol


    What would my Women’s History month be without Liz? This post was first published in October, 2013 two years after her death on March 23, 2011. Please don’t be disappointed in me for not giving more details of her life, her good works during the AIDS pandemic, or her misdeeds. This was then, and is now, more of a love letter. Relax. Remember when…

     

    007

    Maggie the Cat in famous lingerie

    The stuff that dreams are made of

    My love affair with Elizabeth Taylor has lasted longer than any of my real life relationships or all of her eight marriages.  Liz and I go way back.

    We started in 1956 with Giant which I got to see because my mother heard it was a historical movie about West Texas oil.  I was ten years old at the time mama drove me twenty miles from Richards, Texas (pop. 500) to see the movie at the Miller’s Theater in cosmopolitan Navasota (pop. 5,000).  I decided right then and there if this was how history looked, I was all about yesterday. I fell in love with the heroine who was married to Rock Hudson but wild for James Dean.  She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.

    The following year Raintree County was released; it was then and still is today my most favorite silver screen experience with this Golden Age of Hollywood icon. She was “hotter than a two dollar pistol and the fastest thing around…” as George Jones sang twenty years later. For two and a half hours, I lusted after Liz who played Susanna the hottie southern belle who stole Johnny Shawnessy from boring whiny Nell. I never understood why two women would be in love with Montgomery Clift anyway, but I certainly knew why he was taken with Liz.

    001

    “Look at the birdie, look at the tree…my gal’s the prettiest in the whole county.”

    from Raintree County

    I’ve seen that movie countless times with its Gone With the Wind wannabes and celebrated flaws, but I truly don’t care.  For some of her fans, Liz will be remembered as Maggie the Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in the sexy slip or Catherine in the white bathing suit in Suddenly, Last Summer or the scandalous affairs with co-stars Eddie Fisher and Richard Burton on the sets of Butterfield 8 and Cleopatra, respectively.  Others will see her as the child star in National Velvet and the Lassie movies or the deranged middle-aged Martha in 1966 in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  for which she won her second Oscar.

    She will be remembered by many for her notorious marriages and divorces – all eight of them – think Debbie Reynolds, for example. Then think Richard Burton and Cleopatra. If you remember the hullabaloo from those torrid days, you must also remember the  Voting Rights Act of 1965…an act that the Supremes struck down this year.  But don’t get me started on that.

    Why Liz?  Why now, you ask?

    I visited a friend this week and saw the Cat on a Hot Tin Roof poster  (a poster he bought from me at one of our downsizing yard sales) hanging in his den. I was immediately reminded of the time fifty years ago I fell in love with Elizabeth Taylor, wrote her a fan letter and received a glossy 5 x 7 “autographed” photo of her from MGM.  Love, Liz, she signed.

    And I do.

    Stay tuned.