I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

storytelling for truth lovers

  • I Shoulda Been A Cowboy


    I put the key in the ignition of my pickup truck to leave the parking lot of the Brookshire Brothers grocery store this afternoon and the old truck faithfully started one more time.   I am a regular customer for the blue plate special the grocery serves daily and stopped today on the way to visit my mom to pick up something for lunch.   A large newer white pickup truck caught my attention as it pulled into the parking space to my left and the driver kept the engine running.    That annoyed me because I wasn’t sure what he planned to do and backing up in parking lots has become an adventure for me since my eyesight is akin to the old cartoon character Mr. Magoo’s.   I was so preoccupied with watching the guy to my left I hadn’t once glanced to my right.   When I did, this is what I saw…

    Only in Texas, I’m sure.

    I had an almost uncontrollable urge to abandon my Dodge Dakota and run flying to the horse, leap in the saddle and gallop wildly out of the parking lot with the wind blowing my hair around me in swirls!   Ah, so many problems with that fantasy, though.   It’s unlikely I could run anywhere these days and certainly not a prayer of leaping into a saddle.  Ouch!   And as for the hair blowing in the wind, Brad Pitt might pull that look off, but my hair hasn’t been long enough to make a swirl since I was in grammar school many moons ago.

    I shoulda been a cowboy.   Instead, I was a CPA.    A stockbroker.   A financial advisor.    A vice president of investments.   A college accounting instructor.   A church minister of music.    But never a cowboy except when I was a little girl growing up in rural East Texas and I’m pretty sure that doesn’t count.   So, today when I saw the riderless horse standing quietly next to me in the parking lot, I was reminded of the cowboy I wasn’t.

    It’s okay, though.   In real life it’s much easier to ride a desk than a horse and allow books and movies and television westerns to feed my fantasies of the cowboy’s romantic nomadic existence.

    Hmmm…and maybe it wasn’t the horses I was interested in anyway.

  • Images


    IMAGES

    She sits in her large recliner that is covered with worn blankets for extra warmth.

    She is shrunken with age and her spine is so curved by scoliosis she slumps down into the

    bowels of the chair.   It seems to swallow her tiny body.

    She has lost weight since she came to this place three months ago.   She doesn’t eat.

    Her meals are pureed in a blender and fed through a large syringe.

    Open, please.  Thank you.

    She wears bright blue flowered pajamas which I know don’t belong to her.

    She is covered by a Christmas blanket and looks like an incongruous mixture of Hawaii

    with the North Pole.

    Her beautiful white hair is uncombed today and she periodically raises her right hand to

    carefully brush a few strands from her forehead.   There, that’s better.

    Two other women sit in similar recliners in the dark den lit only by the reflected light of

    a massive television screen which is the focal point of the room.

    How I Met Your Mother is playing this afternoon.   No one watches this episode about

    misadventures on New Year’s Eve.

    I find the irony in the sitcom’s name since the woman in Chair Number One is my mother.

    She has needed care for the past four years, and I have sat with her as her dementia progressed

    in medical jargon from mild to moderate to severe.   Severe is where we are for sure.

    I try to talk to her about visiting my aunt over the weekend.   No response.

    Instead, she gazes at her black leather shoes on the floor in front of her.

    Slowly, very deliberately, she bends over and painstakingly reaches for her left shoe.

    I move to help her because I am afraid she’ll fall out of the chair.

    Do you want to put on your shoes, Mom?

    She stares vacantly at me and shakes her head.

    Ok, I say and return to my seat on the large overstuffed sofa next to her chair.

    I make conversation with one of two sisters who care for my mother and the

    two other mothers who sit in the recliners.   Mothers and daughters and sisters.

    We are all connected in the little den with the big tv.

    My mother ignores me as she continues her ritual of laboriously picking up her

    black shoes one by one, tugging on the tongue to ready it for her foot, fiddling with the

    shoelaces as if to adjust them and then lowering the shoe to the floor in front of her to the

    same place it was before.     She does this over and over again.   Ad infinitum.

    During one of her attempts, she drops a shoe beyond her reach, and I put it in front

    of her chair with the other one.

    Do you need help to put on your shoes?  I ask again.

    No.  I have to keep on this road, she answers.   She was on a mission.

    The mother in Chair Number Two tells me she tried to help my mother with her shoes earlier.

    She told me to get away from them so I did, the woman said with a note of exasperation.

    I’m sorry, I say.   That isn’t really who she is.

    But I’m wrong.   That is who she is now.

    I talk and try to avoid watching my mother and her little black shoes for an eternity

    that is only an hour.

    Mom, I have to go, I say.

    She looks at me with some level of recognition and says Don’t leave me.

    I’ll be back in a day or two, I say and hug her and kiss her on the cheek and tell

    her I love her.   I love you too, she says.   I really do.

  • Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh


    GOLD, FRANKINCENSE AND MYRRH

    A CHRISTMAS STORY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

                And it came to pass in these days that there went out a decree from the personal laptop computers and hand-held computers and iPads and iPods and high-definition televisions and Sirius radio satellite stations that all the world should be buying gifts for Christmas in 4G.   And all went to buy gifts, every one into his/her favorite retailer, or online.

    There was an old woman who lived in the world

    and her eyes saw and her ears heard the decree,

    but her heart refused to buy 4G.

    For, you see, too many Christmases had come and gone

    And the old woman’s heart had turned to stone.

    The gifts she wanted couldn’t be wrapped.

    They were buried in memories too deeply trapped.

    But, behold, the old woman was visited by wise women this year,

    And they came bearing gifts of good cheer.

    Gold, frankincense and myrrh from days of old?   Not quite.

    But the women followed the same bright light.

    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.

    This year is different.   I’ve been jolted and shaken out of my cynicism and once again believe in the Magic that is Christmas.   I think my transformation actually began last year when my new neighbors in Texas on Worsham Street decorated their homes and yards with spectacular exterior holiday lighting.   They adorned trees, bushes, windows, doors, porches, benches, roofs – anything they could find to attach a string of lights – and the little street came alive with white icicle lights and plain white lights and multi-colored lights of all shapes and sizes that glowed and blinked and gave the appearance of a miniature Disneyland.  I absolutely loved them and of course, I had to participate with my own lights on our house on the street.  I felt my Christmas ice melt just a little each time I turned the switch that lit my bright lights.  This year the street is again beautiful, and I thank my neighbors for the inspiration of their lighting traditions.

    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 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.

    Family has been re-defined in my adult life by my partner and four children in furry suits that I adore.  I have a step-son who now has a girlfriend he lives with and so our family grows together.  Through the past forty years I’ve been away from Texas I’ve been fortunate to have wonderful friends who have become closer than the DNA-linked group I left behind.  In my gay and lesbian community in South Carolina, the term “family” is a word we use to describe ourselves.  The question, “Do you think she’s family?” is translated, “Do you think she’s a lesbian like us?”  Being part of a marginalized sub-culture creates strong bonds within that environment and my friends have been simply the best.

    Coming home to Texas to live has connected me once again with my DNA family and that’s been an incredible experience and 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 or going with cousins to the Montgomery Annual Cookie Walk or having cousins come to our home or visiting in their homes rekindle good memories of the times when our hair wasn’t white and 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, and 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 laugh and cry together because we are moved by our memories. My family is a Christmas gift.

    But just as the familiar story goes of the Wise Men who followed a bright light to Bethlehem and brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the baby boy in the manger, Wise Women in my life have brought gifts that rocked my Christmas complacency. My partner surprised me with an early gift at Thanksgiving when I went home to her in South Carolina.  It’s worth its weight in gold to me.  It’s a western saddle made of leather and rides a wooden quilt holder that a neighbor gave me when she saw the saddle.  It’s a perfect combination and looks good in my Texas den underneath a picture of a cowboy sitting on a fence.  Whenever I look at the saddle, I think of two of my favorite things: my partner 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 partner for Christmas.  I marvel at this generosity from a friend who surely loves me and 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 thinks he is 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 and 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 welcomes a baby boy into a world of conflict and hardship and hopes he will somehow change it for the better.   The same conflicts continue two thousand years later and hardships of every shape and description 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  with a Merry Christmas to all!

  • Humpty Dumpty


    Hello to those who read my essays and thank you for stopping by to take a look!   This piece is one I’ve written in the last few days, and I hope to post more this month than last, which turned out to be one.  Uno.  I can’t get The Red Man to shut up, but my own work is more difficult.   Go figure.

    HUMPTY DUMPTY

     

    Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

    Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,

    And all the King’s horses and all the King’s men

    Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

    —— Old English Nursery Rhyme

     

                I noticed the red dried blood and purple bruising on the top of her left hand as she sat with both hands folded in the large brown leather recliner that was her assigned seat in the den and wondered what in the world had happened.   This semi-conscious frail woman with wispy uncombed snow white hair slouched down in a chair that swallowed her…with her feet up in their usual elevated position.  Her green sweat suit pants and bright flowered cotton blouse she wore today didn’t belong to her, but they were clean and looked comfortable enough.  She sat on a white pad to prevent accidents to the leather chair.  She was dozing when I came through the door and didn’t stir when I bent to kiss her unwrinkled forehead.   She looked up at me and smiled and then closed her eyes again.   My mother wasn’t interested in talking today.

                Her caregiver Kathy sat across from me on the well-worn sofa and noticed my glance at Mom’s hands.   Kathy was a tall woman and big-boned as we used to say when describing a woman her size.  She had just stepped out of the shower when I arrived for my visit and her hair was wet and pulled back from her not unattractive face.   She had a great smile and genuineness I liked.  

                “Has your mother always been a scratcher or is this something new?” she asked.   “Most of the time when we struggle to get her to take a shower she scratches Norma or me.   I’ve got a new one right here.”   She pointed to a fresh scratch on her hand.   “Yesterday Selma thought she was scratching me but instead she scratched herself so hard on her own hand she made it bleed and then pulled off the band aid I put on it.  It looks worse than it is, though.”

                The idea of my mother being a “scratcher” was like a foreign movie without subtitles.  Difficult to comprehend, yet I knew it was true.  I’d heard a nurse say the same thing in her hospital room a few weeks ago to the young aide who was to give Mom a bath in her bed.  “Be careful, she’s a scratcher,” the nurse said.   I had almost fainted.  My mother, the prim and proper little woman who taught second grade in a public school for twenty-five years and played the piano in Southern Baptist churches for more than fifty years, was a scratcher.   It’s a world gone mad.

                “No, it’s not new,” I said.   “I’m not sure how long she’s been doing it, but I know it happened at least once during her hospital stay several weeks ago.  I’m so sorry she does it to you, but I can tell you it’s completely out of character for her.”

                “Oh, no, don’t worry.  I totally understand.  We’ve seen most everything with our Alzheimer folks,” Kathy said.

                I had entrusted the care of my mother six weeks ago to the two sisters, Kathy and Norma, who lived in the country twenty-two miles from my home in Montgomery, Texas.   Their brick house was an unassuming ranch style with a beautiful swimming pool screened and covered like the ones I had seen in Florida.  This made sense when I found they grew up in the Melbourne area.  The sisters came highly recommended to me by a friend whose father lived with them for seven years before he died last year.   My friend said her family had chosen them from several options and never regretted the choice.

                Mom lived in a Memory Care Unit for the past four years in a large assisted-living residential community in southwest Houston.   The setting was relatively plush and her unit housed twenty patients.   The cost rose every year she was there and was now almost $6,000 a month for her care for moderate to severe dementia and the related deterioration of her physical capacities.  Incontinence and lack of ability to walk without a walker were major changes in her condition in recent years.   Her world was sustained by her routine and the familiar surroundings of her private small apartment that defined it.   Locked entrances and exits set her boundaries and she adjusted to this world with an acceptance bordering on relief from the necessity of trying to preserve an identity she had long forgotten.   When I visited her in the Memory Care Unit, I typically found her in good spirits and checking her watch to see what she was supposed to do next.   Was it time for a meal?  Should she be in the dining room?   Did she need to go to the living room for a movie or exercise class or Wheel of Fortune or Bingo?   Were they going out for ice cream?   Someone had a plan, and my mother loved a plan.

                God bless long-term care insurance and the benefits it provided that covered the last four years of my mother’s stay in Houston.   Unfortunately, her benefit period ended this fall and economic realities made change unavoidable.   Her move to the house in the country was an answer for one problem but generated a host of others.   On the day I drove her to her new home, the conversation was dramatic foreshadowing of the days to come.

                “Mom, don’t you think it’s beautiful to be in the country like this?” I asked her as we rode along in my pickup truck.

                “Yes, it’s beautiful all right, but I wouldn’t want to live out here,” she replied.

                Indeed, she did not go gently into that good night, as the poet Dylan Thomas described.   When we arrived at her new home, she had forgotten the hamburger and fries I’d bribed her with at lunch to improve her mood.   She reluctantly sat down in the den with her two new compatriots, Anne and Virginia.   Anne had mild to moderate dementia and was in her early eighties, I would learn later.   She was an attractive frail woman with pulmonary issues and needed frequent breathing treatments.   Virginia was eighty-nine and proud of it and was in a better mental and physical state than either Mom or Anne.   She forgot words but generally followed conversation threads and understood contexts.  She was the only one of the three women who didn’t need a walker.    I liked the two women immediately and hoped Mom would, too.

                “I don’t understand why I have to be here, and I don’t think it’s right for you to bring me  without telling me we were coming to stay,” Mom said to me when we sat down on the sofa in the den.   Anne and Virginia each sat in large recliners facing the sofa and listened to our conversation.    Lack of privacy was a new challenge in the intimate den, I thought.

                “Well, they did the same thing to me,” Anne said to Mom.   “My daughter Beverly and her husband just brought me in here one day and left.”

                “Me, too,” Virginia chimed in.   “But I like it now and I’m glad you’re moving in.   You can have the other big chair.   I hope we don’t get anybody else because we only have three big chairs.”

                And so began the next chapter in my mother’s battle with the devils of her own mind and body.   Within ten days, as we began the process of changing to local doctors and pharmacies for her medications, she developed a severe urinary tract infection, which is not uncommon for women of her age and physical state.   But she required treatment in the community hospital for a week and after I brought her home from that stay, she hasn’t been the same.   She says little and doesn’t eat solid food.   The sisters feed her a liquid diet through a contraption that looks like an oversized eye dropper to me.   She’s had company in the hospital and in her new home – visits from nephews, cousins, other family members and even a visit from her former pastor.   She greets everyone with a smile and says a practiced thank you for coming.  The level of recognition appears to be distant with no connection to the present. 

                Her main question for me in the hospital as she lay attached to tubes of all sorts day after day was, “How long are you going to be in the hospital?  I didn’t know you were sick.”   I told her I didn’t know how long but I was glad she was there with me.    

                Did she have the uti before she moved?   Probably.   Would she have been so sick if she hadn’t moved?  Maybe not.  The mind and body work strangely in tandem, I’ve observed, and my mother is seemingly lost without her old planned life in the Memory Care Unit.   Hopefully, time will allow her to find a new routine that will offer her the comfort of consistency.   Her world is like the world of Humpty Dumpty, however.   All the King’s horses and all the King’s men won’t be able to put Humpty together again as he once was.  The fall has been too great.

  • ‘Tis The Season


    Ok, I am clearly all over the board in this blog and have mixed new essays with excerpts from the book that was the ulterior motive for beginning  Essays with Humor in general and I’ll Call It Like I See It specifically.   The good news is one of my August posts has been published in a literary ezine called bioStories!   I’ve added the link to my blogroll here and hope that you will visit the site – it’s a very interesting concept, the stories are compelling and the editor was very encouraging to me.   I’d like to do the same for him.

    Since I find it impossible to develop a semi-schedule of writing for my posts here, I decided to forge ahead with my Thanksgiving essay a bit early this morning.   (My alter ego, The Red Man, has no trouble with his Rants and Raves and refuses to shut up which may partially explain my struggles here.)  

    I’ll miss Thanksgiving in Fingerville, South Carolina this year due to the vicissitudes of life, as my daddy used to say, but it will be with me wherever I am.

    SEASONS GREETINGS FROM FINGERVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINA

     

                Today is a day of giving thanks.  We cleverly named it Thanksgiving Day and have celebrated it for more than four hundred years in the United States.  I was surprised to learn that this tradition was actually introduced to the U.S. in 1565 by Spaniards in St. Augustine, Florida.  This newsflash made me feel a little better about the Texas Thanksgiving Day weather of my youth.  My elementary school textbooks portrayed pouty Pilgrims wearing ridiculously tall hats, oversized belt buckles, and heavy coats—all in black.  They invariably stood in deep white snow and appeared to be near freezing.  I recall being embarrassed at our lack of proper cold temperatures for Thanksgiving in rural east Texas.  If snow was good enough for the Pilgrims, it should have been good enough for us.  It makes me happy, then, to think that this holiday really began as a fiesta in Florida with lots of warmth and sunshine and people who knew how to party.  I have visions of tortilla soup, cheese enchiladas, and key lime pie.  (I’m not sure how we made the leap to turkey from tortillas or pumpkin pie from key lime, but that’s a question for another day.)

                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 and of buying more of what we don’t need in larger quantities.

                When I was a child, Halloween was a night for wearing a costume made by my grandmother and walking with my friends to trick-or-treat in our little town.  We each carried small paper sacks to collect the few pieces of candy offered by our neighbors.  The highlight of the evening was the home that gave away homemade popcorn balls that were the size of tennis balls and had the rich aroma of freshly popped corn mixed with the white Karo syrup that held it together.  They tasted as good as they smelled.

    Sixty years later, I am astonished to see bags and more bags of Halloween candy in grocery stores.  I’m talking about bags.  I’m talking about the biggest bags you can imagine.  I’m talking about bags of every color with every kind of candy known to the human species.  Some of the bags are so big that they are difficult to carry.  Enormous bags.  Enough candy to last for years.  Take several, will you?  I’m drowning in Halloween candy.

    And I’m talking about decorations, too.  When did Halloween require stringing orange lights and black bats outside your house?  When did it get out of control?  Last year I stood with a large group of my neighbors who were mesmerized by the elaborate decorations of a house in our neighborhood.  The entire front yard was filled with ghosts in an array of positions and the ability to become animated when activated.  Our neighbor started the display regularly every night for two hours and did this for several weeks.  On his cue, the ghosts in the bluegrass band played country music and hymns as the other figures performed by popping up from behind bushes to frighten the children.  Seriously, hymns.  Hymns for Halloween.  Oh, yes, and yet another ghost repeatedly beat the head of one that tried to rise from a coffin.  People came from far and near to watch.  Halloween is officially an Event.  Put a special note on your calendar that October 31 is an important day in our lives.  We party.

    But, on November 1, watch out.  Clear the aisles.  Christmas candy—bags galore—has miraculously supplanted the Halloween candy, which is now half price.  Christmas decorations appear out of nowhere to signal the retail onslaught of the season.  If you think you’re seeing red, you’re probably right, because red is the signature color for this time of the year.  Red Santas, red stockings, red wrapping paper, red cards, red candy canes, red ribbons, red blinking lights—everywhere you look, you’re seeing red with a splash of green or gold or white for emphasis.  It’s time to buy.  A gong has sounded, and no payments will be due on anything until next year.  Thank goodness.  Because we won’t be able to afford them this year.  We must decorate.  We need to get out our trimmings to make sure they’re blinking properly, and, of course, we’ll need to buy some new ones, too.  The season demands it.  Something old.  Something new, nothing borrowed, nothing blue.  Mostly something new.  Definitely something red.

    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 and planes and people in a hurry to get somewhere.  It’s time to travel, and 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.

    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 the morning 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.

     My daddy used to tell me it was pointless to compare my life to someone else’s.  He said  I could always find someone who had more than I did, or look in another direction to discover someone who had less.  My daddy was a wise man.  Today, I count my many blessings, and, as the hymn says, I name them one by one.  For the father who insisted the whole earth was my territory and who tried to show me as much of that world as he could, I am thankful.  For the mother who wrestled her own demons as she tried to accept her daughter’s differences but never quit loving that daughter, I am thankful. For the partner who knows me inside and out and loves me for who I am, I am thankful.

    I celebrated last Thanksgiving with my partner Teresa’s family.  We drove from our home in Columbia to the First Baptist Church of Fingerville in the upstate of South Carolina where she is from.  (No kidding.  The town’s real name is Fingerville.)  This wonderful extended family from her mother’s side gathers in the fellowship hall of the church every year to eat an evening meal and to remind each other that family differences don’t necessarily mean family disconnections.  Although politics and religion are divisive issues and shelved as topics of conversation during the gathering, the gossip surrounding the activities of children and grandchildren are fair game.  The aunts and uncles who are older now speak volumes without words, and the simplicity and sameness of the party suggest a time long ago and far away.  In the midst of a truly southern meal, our souls were nourished.

    Three different kinds of cornbread dressing went well with either the turkey or ham.  Several dishes of creamed corn, sweet potato casseroles, green beans, black-eyed peas, fruit salads, and green salads completely filled the main tables in the fellowship hall of the church.  A second large table was reserved for the desserts that included pumpkin and pecan pies, coconut cake, lemon pound cake, and an assortment of Krispy Kreme donuts.  Drinks were available in the kitchen that was adjacent to the dining area of the fellowship hall.  Sweet and unsweet iced tea and coffee provided the right amount of caffeine to make sure everyone stayed awake during the ride home.  It was a feast, and an exact replica of the meals I had in Texas for Thanksgiving.  No wonder Teresa and I were happy—our families shared the same recipes!  I miss the ones in my family who are gone, but I’m fortunate to have another one that welcomes me to their table.

    Whether it was the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock or the Spaniards in Florida or some other group yet to be recognized, I salute this day of giving thanks.  It’s a meaningful one for me and suits my tendency to ponder.  For those of you who prefer the orange lights of Halloween and the white lights of Christmas, I wish you joy and strands that are easy to untangle.  I also fervently pray to the Gods of All Holidays that Thanksgiving candy and Thanksgiving outdoor decorations are hereby permanently prohibited.  Amen.