by sheila morris
storytelling for truth lovers
Nancy said know your why – what motivates you – what matters to you – what you believe – the why. Hillary said get the naysayers and the whiners and the snipers to go to the back of the room… this country can still do good stuff with Joe Biden. Ruth said educators have to be at the forefront of fighting the country’s impulses to become ignorant again. Three amazing women on TV this morning before 9 o’clock, and it’s September – six months after Women’s History Month in March. Such a wonderful surprise for me when, yes I admit it, I am languishing without tennis at the US Open. I needed a swift kick in the butt to energize me for 2024, to shake me out of my whining and naysaying, to remind me of my personal “why.”
Nancy Pelosi is a household name and, depending on the household, revered as an American politician who led fierce opposition to a Republican president when she was Speaker of the House of Representatives the second time, just as fiercely led support for President Joe Biden that produced the most sweeping legislation the country has seen since the LBJ administration. Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi was born in 1940 to a family with Italian heritage and a commitment to public service.
Hillary Clinton is also a household name and, again depending on the household, celebrated as the first woman to be nominated by a major political party for the office of President of the United States in 2016, an election she lost to her opponent. Clinton was born in 1947, influenced during her college years by the Vietnam War and the American Civil Rights movement, was a fomer first Lady of the United States, former US Senator, former Secretary of State. This year she will be a professor and fellow in global affairs at Columbia University.
Dr. Ruth Simmons, on the other hand, is not a household name, but she is an American educator who became the first Black president of an Ivy League college, Brown University, in addition to serving as presidents of two other colleges: Smith College and Prairie View A&M University. She did her undergraduate work on scholarship at HBCU Dillard University in New Orleans, earned a master’s and Ph.D from Harvard. She was born the youngest of 12 children in Grapeland, Texas to a sharecropper’s family in 1945 when the message to people of color was you are not smart enough to ever become anyone. Her memoir Up Home: One Girl’s Journey was published last week by Random House and is already a New York Times Bestseller.
Ok. Now I’m wide awake, feeling guilty for my fears for the future when I’ve heard three women who are in my cohort by age only (I was born in 1946), three women who refuse to give up on a flawed America too often characterized by our differences in world view rather than the similarities of our hopes and dreams for our children, three women who continue to look forward to change rather than fear it. May Sarton writes in her Journal At Seventy if someone asked me what are the greatest human qualities, I would have to answer courage, courage and imagination. If Sarton could have lived to hear these three extraordinary women this morning, I think she would agree with me that they all possess the greatest human qualities. They are women of courage, imagination and I would add perseverance.
To paraphrase Nancy today, I am an optimist. But I have a lot of worries.
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Slava Ukraini. For the children.
Coco Gauff is now the youngest American to win the US Open since Serena Williams in 1999 and the fourth teenage American in the Open era to win the home Slam. And she did so on the anniversary of both Arthur Ashe’s breakthrough US Open victory in 1968 and Venus Williams‘ maiden title at the event in 2000. (D’Arcy Maine, ESPN.com)
Gauff won her final on the Arthur Ashe Stadium Court of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, the same court where she watched Venus and Serena Williams play ten years earlier in 2013 at the age of nine when her father took her to see her first US Open tennis tournament. The Williams sisters inspired a new generation of American tennis players for more than two decades – their legacy will be as powerful as their play was on the Ashe Stadium Court.
Serena won her fifth US Open women’s singles championship in 2013
Pretty and I watched Coco overcome losing the first set of the championship match to Aryna Sabalenka who will be the number 1 player in the world tomorrow when the rankings come out by winning the next two sets with power, placement, and perseverance. When I finally could breathe, I told Pretty I was thankful to have lived long enough to witness a new generation of American tennis players who have the potential to fulfill the legacy the Williams sisters created.
Coco wins her first US Open title in 2023
When Gauff was handed her $3 million check during the presentation, she turned to find tennis legend and social justice activist King standing a few feet away from her on the podium and said thank you Billie, for fighting for this.
Congratulations to Coco Gauff not only for her incredible victory on the courts but also for her remarkable understanding of what this victory will mean off the courts as well. I believe the Summer of Coco Express in 2023 is unlimited.
“You’ll have to keep the room as dark as possible. Put sheets over these windows to keep the light out,” Dr. Sanders instructed Mama. “She should eat soups, broths, jellies and Jell-o. That’s all. She can’t strain her eyes, so no books to look at, and no excitement of any kind. I’ll come back again in a few days to see how she’s getting along. It’s just a bad case of the measles, so don’t worry. They’re going around this winter, and she was bound to catch them.”
“How long will she be sick?” Mama asked.
“Depends on how bad a case she has. Sometimes they miss two weeks of school. We’ll have to see. Sheila Rae’s only seven, and the young ones seem to get better quicker. The penicillin shot should help.”
With that bit of cheeriness old Dr. Sanders got heavily to his feet and picked up his black bag. He was a large man with a balding head of white hair that was typically covered by a small brown weather-beaten hat. He peered over rimless glasses that teetered precariously on a nose that appeared lost between his rotund cheeks. He reminded me of Santa Claus in a frayed black suit instead of a shiny red one.
That’s why I always liked him right up until he gave me the penicillin shot, which appeared to be his cure for everything including measles. He was cheery, but not above inflicting pain on defenseless children. And in their own house, too. Not fair.
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My mother always followed the doctor’s orders which included his dietary recommendations for every illness as faithfully as the shot of penicillin he carried in his black bag. This past week I developed a bad case of the epizooti which is my medical term for illnesses I “catch” from Pretty’s allergies. I remembered the dietary advice Dr. Sanders gave when I was sick with any childhood malady so I thought I would follow it seven decades later. Forgive me for skipping the soups, broths and Jell-o recommendations to go straight for the jellies. The Shipt shopper must have wondered why I needed three kinds of preserves: grape, strawberry and apricot. Yummy. The apricot on two pieces of toast for breakfast this morning made me feel better already.
As for the doctor’s “no excitement of any kind” advice, too little too late. The US Open men’s semi-finals in singles were this weekend, and the women’s final is this afternoon. Coco Gauff is my pick to win it all, but Aryna Sabalenka is a tall order for the nineteen year old Gauff who is the first American teenager to be in a final at the US Open since, wait for it, Serena Williams in 2001. Go, Coco!
Whether the surface is a hard one or made of red clay or manicured green grass, the goal is the same: to win, to beat someone. To play better, smarter and mentally tougher than the opponent. To be more physical and aggressive. To charge the net when an opening appears. To cover the baseline when the shots go deep against you. The court is a battlefield and the scales of justice are often tipped by net cords and fractions of inches along white lines. The game is tennis, but the game of life is similar.
How often must we summon courage to charge the net when an opening appears – when the scales of justice have tipped too far in the direction of injustice, when we stand behind the baseline for protection from the deep shots fired against us by people whose purpose is to disrupt our rhythm, to create confusion in our understanding of what matters most. Yes, the game is life, but the game of tennis is similar.
For men who play singles, the winner is usually required to win two of three sets. In Grand Slam events, however, the rules change to three of five sets to determine the champion. If each man wins two sets, a fifth set is played. The fifth set is often the scene of one man’s surrender and loss to another man’s courage and inner strength. The first four sets are evenly played, but the last one is too much for the body or mind or will or all of the above for one of the guys and the desire to win or to not lose drives his opponent to victory. When the game is life, time controls how many sets we play. For some, the opportunities to play five sets never happen because winners and losers are determined at the end of three or four sets or earlier when players are forced to retire because of illness or injury.
I love fifth sets in tennis. I particularly like them when they are close and long, and I’m not even paying for my seat in front of the television set. Nope, I’m watching for free, but I have the deluxe box seats and have seen my share of Grand Slams in Melbourne, Paris, London and New York City. From my ABCs of Agassi to Becker to Connors to later Golden Era Greats Federer and Nadal I admire the passion and persistence of the five-set winners. There is a moment of high drama called match point when the difference between winning and losing in the fifth set can be measured in split-second choices and breaks in concentration. Match points can be saved and the game can go on for hours, but in the end, a match point is lost and the winner takes center court with a victorious smile and wave to the crowd.
Whenever I watch a five-set tennis match, I am reminded that match points in tennis have an advantage over those we have in real life. Jannik Sinner and Alexander Zverev understood the importance of the fifth set and its match point last night at the US Open in New York City. Their embrace at the net following the match showed their separate reactions to winning and losing match point, but we as individuals may never know when we miss the chance to win – or lose what we value most. Moving through the game of life we often struggle to identify those inflection points that will profoundly define our fifth set’s legacy, but maybe, just maybe, we will recognize one more opportunity to charge the net with courage, to leave the safety of the baseline to protect what we must not lose.
I'll Call It Like I See It 
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