I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

storytelling for truth lovers

  • How Did Stella Really Get Her Groove Back?


    I was talking to one of my favorite soul sisters tonight and she said something that crackled across the phone and smacked me upside the head with a satellite wave whack. It’s time for me to get my groove back, she said, and I understood immediately what she meant because I knew that was my problem, too. I’d lost my groove. Somewhere in the midst of the vicissitudes of life, as my daddy used to say, I’d buried my groove as surely as I’d buried the ashes of my mother in the little Fairview cemetery ten months ago. I hadn’t heard the reference to “getting your groove back” since I watched the movie How Stella Got Her Groove Back a hundred years ago, but I remembered the essentials. Apparently a young sexy shirtless Taye Diggs was the spark plug for a middle-aged Angela Bassett’s recovery of her misplaced spontaneity and optimism for her life. As I recall, Stella (Ms. Bassett) located her groove in less than two hours of screen time and happily rejoined the human race that she had forsaken. Sigh. Now, that’s what I’m talkin’ about. Fixer-upper for lost groove. Quick and easy.

    I’m fairly confident a shirtless man won’t be my impetus for getting my groove back and I know with certainty the process will take longer than two hours. Regardless, I do recollect Stella’s outlook became brighter and she seemed more hopeful for her future at the end of the film. I’m beginning to feel a small crack in the tortoise shell of grief that has covered me during the last year. Death and dying are two separate but equal tragedies and both exact a price on those who watch and wait. The tragedies remind me of my own mortality which brings questions of legacy and the life I chose to live. For those of us who tend to be contemplative and who ponder on a regular basis, facing our own mortality is a daunting undertaking. Undertaking. Hah. Get it?

    The grieving doesn’t end, but the images I carry from the tragedies dim and dwindle away and I am left with a knowledge of the importance of this moment in this day in this time because I am not promised another breath. I’m thinking that’s my first step toward getting my groove back. Stay tuned.

  • Thank God for Unanswered Prayer


    One of my favorite country western songs has the catchy title  Thank God for Unanswered Prayer.  Garth Brooks wrote it and performs it and it’s played regularly on my Country Legends radio station that I live with when I’m in Texas.  If I were straight and young, I would be a Garth Brooks groupie.  Seriously.  Alas, I am neither so I will be content with listening to him every day along with his other gazillion fans.  Garth Brooks is in the same  category of record sales and awards as Elvis and The Beatles.   I kid you not.  Look it up in your Funk and Wagnall’s or, as I did, on Wikipedia which has the answers to all questions.  Elvis, The Beatles, Garth Brooks.  Chew on that for a minute.

    In this particular hit tune he and his wife have a random encounter with an ex-girlfriend and he remembers the intensity of that passion and the fervent prayers he uttered to his God for things to work out with her.  As you might imagine from the title of the song, he concludes his life is much better without her and that some of “God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.”

    My theology is suspect.  As I grew up in a conservative Southern Baptist environment in the 1950s and 60s I developed serious misgivings about my place in the hereafter, but I’m not wrestling that old demon today.   Instead, I was reminded of a few of my own unanswered prayers when I heard Garth’s song.   A funny flashback came to me of a deep-sea fishing trip off the Oregon coast when I was in my early twenties.  A couple of the older women I worked with at Brodie Hotel Supply in Seattle invited me to go with them and their husbands on a salmon fishing adventure early one cloudy Saturday morning.   To make a very long fishing tale short, I have a vivid memory of praying to God from the boat’s only bathroom where I spent the day.  The captain’s apologies to me from the other side of the restroom door for the roughest seas he’d sailed in years mattered not.  I begged him to contact the Coast Guard to send a helicopter to rescue me from the wretched or retched boat and I promised God if He would just get me off that boat I would never bother him again from the open seas.  The prayer went unanswered until the eight-hour expedition was complete.  Too little, too late.  I counted it unanswered.

    Regardless of my theology and its well-documented demise in my later years, I confess to praying for outcomes in situations that were desperate during the vicissitudes of life.  One particular time I believed I wouldn’t survive the loss of an eighteen-year relationship that ended when I was fifty-four years old.   I was undone.  Woe was me.  But just like Garth Brooks in his song, I thank God for unanswered prayer during those difficult days.  This week I celebrate my twelfth anniversary with my version of a gift.   My partner Teresa is the spicy salsa for the rather tortilla chip person I’ve always been.  She’s brought laughter and love with her as she breezed passionately into the core of my being.   We are not strangers to struggles nor immune to heartbreak in the years we’ve been together, but the joys comfort us when we are called upon to share the sorrows.

    Life is good, and I am grateful for unanswered prayers.

  • I Is Flawed. You Is Flawed. We Is All Flawed.


    Since Lance Armstrong had to look up the definition of “cheat” to figure out if what he did throughout a storied cycling career was wrong, I decided to look up “flawed” in my trusty Oxford American Thesaurus that I use for help in my writing.  His explanation of sorts for his inexplicable ruination of the lives of his friends and fellow cyclists and their families in addition to the hopes and dreams of fans all over the world who rallied around his comeback kid cycling career for over a decade– was that he was “flawed.”

    Flaw noun 1 a flaw in his character.  fault, defect, imperfection, blemish, failing, foible, shortcoming, weakness, weak spot

    Aha.  I recognize myself and many of my friends and family in this definition.  Indeed. I fear I am eat up with flawed and find that Medicare age doesn’t necessarily correct the faults and weaknesses of my earlier years.  A good example I can point to is my sweet tooth.  Is it possible to have more than one?  If it’s possible, I think I’ve always had more than one sweet tooth.  I rarely meet a dessert I don’t like and even as I write this I wish I had one of Dick Hubbard’s delicious pineapple cupcakes and why stop at one?    If I weighed within the acceptable guidelines for a five feet two-inch sixty-six-year-old woman, my cravings for sugar wouldn’t be a flaw but alas, I need to be the height of the beanstalk Jack climbed to have a body mass index of less than thirty-two.  I have several less obvious foibles, but I guarantee you they are visible to my girl Teresa who will agree that I is flawed on many levels.

    Much of the chatter on ESPN today following Mr. Armstrong’s Oprah Outing last night has focused on the word legacy.   What will be Lance Armstrong’s legacy in light of his doping and his lyin’ and cheatin’ heart?  Really, it’s perfect material for a country western song.  Oh gosh, it’s already been written.  Your cheatin’ heart will tell on you.  Ain’t that right, Hank?  Ain’t that right, Bill?

    Legacy noun 2…inheritance, heritage, tradition, hand-me-down, residue.

    We will hear the  word legacy more and more as President Barak Obama takes the oath of office Monday for his second and final inauguration.  The political pundits are already sniffing around in that general area as the inaugural festivities will be front and center fodder for the media this weekend and for weeks to come.  The traditions and heritage the President leaves in four years will define his presidency as surely as Lance Armstrong’s confession to Oprah last night defined his.   The residue from that interview isn’t pretty and to borrow from the words of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg: “…the world will little note nor long remember what we said here, but it will never forget what we did here.”

    Legacy smegacy Lance.  I’m afraid your legacy is lunacy.

    Lunacy noun 2…madness, insanity, foolishness, folly, foolhardiness, stupidity, idiocy, irrationality, illogicality, senselessness, absurdity, absurdness, silliness, inanity, ludicrousness…

    You get the picture.  And  if the cycling shoe fits?

  • Wanted: New Scout (s)?


    Mea culpa, mea culpa for my neglect of this site in recent weeks.   I have no excuses.  I appear to be caught  in the Land of New Book Promotion with no GPS for successful navigation and I believe I need a new scout like Robert Horton was for the 1950s TV show Wagon Train.  He always kept Ward Bond and the train on the right trail with no frivolous detours and, other than a few attacks by marauders here and there, the train inched its way slowly week by week toward the Promised Land.  Yes, that’s exactly the kind of leadership I need.  A new scout.  Maybe I need two new scouts…or even three…or possibly this trip requires an entire Cyberspace Posse of Scouts!

    Raise your right hand and repeat after me, “I do solemnly swear to put on my thinking cap for two minutes and send one good idea to promote I’ll Call It Like I See It to Ward Bond a/k/a the writer sheila morris so help me  Robert Horton.”

    Just to get you started, here are a few of the watering holes I’m currently searching for:  book clubs, independent book stores, meetups, house parties, literary roundtables, book festivals, Oprah.   I thought Oprah had real potential but then she got caught up in this whole Lance Armstrong thing.  Seriously Oprah.   What’s more important?  Lance Armstrong and his lifetime of lies or I’ll Call it Like I See It with its treasures of truth?  I think you know.

    I promise to write more as soon as we make camp for the night…Wagons – Ho!!

  • The In-Between Years

    The In-Between Years


    Through the good or lean years and for all the in-between years is a line from a Frank Sinatra classic All The Way.   As I lay 2012 to rest for a final countdown before the ball drops in Times Square in New York City tonight, I ask myself to rate the year as good, lean or in-between.   Understand this is a subjective, biased, prejudiced and totally personal evaluation.  It meets none of the standards for any Academy of Anything and as such, is not subject to review by a replay official.   I’m not sure if the year passed as quickly for you as it did for me, but I confess mine seemed to pass faster than a falling star so I hope you have a notated calendar to refresh your memories as mine does for me.

    The first day of 2012 I was in Texas and spent New Year’s Day with my mother who lived in a personal care residence with two other older women and the two wonderful sisters who cared for all of them.  She was in the severe stage of her dementia and, although I had no way of knowing it on that day, she wouldn’t survive the year and neither would the other two women who shared the home and enjoyed my New Year’s visit.  I’ve always loved women of any age and these were some of the most entertaining ever.  It was a good start to the new year.

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    Mom

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    Miss Ann

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    Miss Virginia

    Whenever I’m in Texas I always have great visits with my favorite Aunt Lucille who lives in Beaumont, one of my least favorite Texas towns.  My aunt will be ninety-three years old in 2013 and is an avid reader and crossword puzzle aficionado.  She lives now in an independent living apartment in a retirement community in Beaumont.  The nearness of neighbors and a standing dinner group of six women from her building in the late afternoon for dinner suit her social nature and need to be out and about.  Movies?  Politics?  TV shows?  Books?  Ask my aunt about any of these and she’s in her element with an attitude toward life that says Hey take your best shot at me, but I’m hangin’ in for as long as I can.  In 2012 I saw her more than a dozen times which was more than I’d visited her in one year…ever.  Each visit lifted my spirits and was just plain fun.

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    My favorite Aunt Lucille

    The year confirmed my status as a bi-stateual with extended periods of time in Texas and South Carolina and keeping the roads hot from here to there and back.  My partner Teresa traveled with me whenever she could get away from her job and I managed to coerce other friends to make the trip when she couldn’t go with me and refused to let me drive by myself any more.  Even with my “new” eyes from a second cataract surgery in July, my truck bears the dents and dings of my parking misadventures and alas, let’s face it.  I have a GPS but occasionally disagree with it and then I find I am not there when I need me.  I am somewhere else.

    Teresa and I did some fun trips during 2012.  At the end of February, which is our anniversary month, we drove to Valle Crucis, North Carolina, in the Blue Ridge Mountains for a couple of days of work and play.  She worked.  I played.

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    Blue Ridge Mountains, Boone, North Carolina

    Six months later in August we had a family vacation with our son Drew and his girlfriend Caroline.  We drove to the northeast to sightsee and spend time together and try to re-group from the losses earlier in the year.  Abraham Lincoln blessed us in Gettysburg and we traveled safely to the shores of Maine and along the coast in Rhode Island and saw beautiful scenery in Pennsylvania and Connecticut.  Boston was a hit for many reasons not the least of which was its good food.  We counted on Caroline to make sure we ate at the best restaurants according to her online guides.  Iphones were in, and Teresa and Drew had dueling GPSs that didn’t always want to go in the same direction.  So many gadgets…so much confusion.  So much merriment.

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    On my birthday in April I was at the funeral of the woman I knew as a second mother for over forty-five years.  She and my mom were as close as sisters and they were both heartbroken when I had to separate them four years ago because they could no longer take care of each other.  Willie Flora was eighty-two in March of this past year and my mom was eighty-five that same month.  Willie died on April 14th in Richmond, Texas and my mom died eleven days later in Willis.  It was sorrow upon sorrow.

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    Willie

    In September my neighbor Heather and I had a shower for another neighbor, Becky, who created additional excitement by announcing that her water broke a couple of hours before the shower was to start.   High drama, but we moved the time up, she came and opened her gifts, had a piece of cake and was then whisked away by her husband Gary to the hospital where she gave birth to her third baby boy four hours later.  George is growing by leaps and bounds and should be a fine nuisance for his older brothers Oscar and Dwight.

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    Dwight plus Oscar plus cookie jar = Good Times

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    George in his New Baby phase

    In November my third book was published and I was thrilled with how it looked when it came from the printer.  I loved the covers and had a sense of accomplishment as I placed it in my office next to my first two books.  I hope my cyberspace friends will want to read the final version since you’ve shared a number of the stories with me in the past year right here on this blog.  There is freedom in growing older and a sense of entitlement to Call It Like You See It — and even sweeter to see what you’re calling in print

    Good year?  Lean year?  In-between year?  The votes have been tallied by an unreliable CPA (me) and I have to report the in-between has it.  Births and deaths mark our beginnings and our endings, but the middle is what keeps our attention.  I’ll lay 2012 down tonight and pick up 2013.  I can’t predict what will happen in the New Year, but I can predict I will struggle to stay awake to ring it in.

    Teresa and I wish all of you a Happy and Healthy New Year!  Thanks for stopping by…