I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

storytelling for truth lovers

  • disaster strikes Carport Kitty

    disaster strikes Carport Kitty


    The routine Carport Kitty has trained me for begins with her breakfast every morning. The time varies, depending on when she decides to welcome the new day. She seems to rely on the ridiculous barking of our three dogs who have the advantage of being inside and, therefore, closer to the food source. That hullabaloo usually takes place shortly before 8 o’clock.

    When the dogs eat, the barking mercifully stops and I look through the glass window in the kitchen door to check on Carport Kitty who typically exits her heating pad throne in the laundry room, stretches, stretches some more and sits next to her food bowl as if to say, what’s for breakfast today O Fickle Food Provider. Don’t forget the Fancy Feast.

    Any change in routine makes me nervous. And I mean any change in routine so when Carport Kitty didn’t make her customary appearance one morning last week, I was wigged. What could have happened? Where could she be?

    Oh no, I cried when I went into the laundry room to check on her! (Cleaned up language for cyberspace.)

    I picked up four pieces that had been one of Pretty’s heavy wooden rolling pins she kept on the top shelf of the laundry. The pieces were scattered near Carport Kitty’s throne. OMG, I panicked. What if one had hit CK in the head and knocked her senseless?? What if she had wandered into the street, gotten hit by a car and couldn’t make her way home? What if the accident happened during the night before and, again knocked senseless, she became easy pray for a coyote eager to gobble her up?

    That coyote thing was over the top, I thought. We had never seen a coyote anywhere in our neighborhood. I had to dial it back before I rushed inside to wake Pretty with the news. Pretty somehow slept through the early morning routine every day, but when a Major Disaster strikes, Pretty is your voice of reason.

    She and I made a thorough search of the area around our house and yard, and Pretty tried to calm my nerves by saying Carport Kitty was probably fine. She could miss breakfast but would be back later for her afternoon snack. I wasn’t overly optimistic but tried to look less worried when Pretty left for work a little while later.

    Almost immediately my phone rang with Pretty’s special ring. She had spotted Carport Kitty two houses up from us in Neighbor John’s driveway. Neighbor John was the carport she frequented before she came to ours so of course she would go there when the sky was falling in. I was beyond relieved. Bless her heart, I thought. I would have a special snack for her when she got hungry if she somehow managed to come back to us.

    I began a vigil to wait for our poor pitiful pussy.

    WTF?

    When I was finally rewarded with her joyful return that afternoon at snack time, this was the look she gave me. More disdain than delight.

    She didn’t return to the pantry for two days but then cold windy weather hit the sunny South. Carport Kitty was home – and warm.

  • winning it all – losing everything

    winning it all – losing everything


    ESPN image

    Coach Dawn Staley and her Championship Team

    The University of South Carolina Gamecock flag flew atop the South Carolina State Capitol building Monday following the victory of the Gamecock women’s basketball team over UConn Sunday night in the NCAA Division I championship game in Minneapolis, Minnesota – the end of the 2021-22 season that saw Coach Dawn Staley’s team begin as the Number 1 team in the nation and remain there for the duration. Truly a magical season for the Gamecock Nation which includes Pretty, me, our 2.5 year old granddaughter Ella and 12,300 of our closest friends for every home game.

    Even as we celebrate, though, we remain constantly mindful of the crimes against humanity in Ukraine. Those images yesterday from a suburb outside Kyiv are seared into our consciousness with the force of a blunt instrument attacking our innate sensibilities.

    As my friend Ellen Hawley wrote recently, “…grief is a funny thing and will pour itself into any container it finds.” In this upside down world, my words have always been my container of choice. I weep with the people of Ukraine today and ask for accountability for their losing everything.

  • it’s April 1st, fool! march madness is over, right?

    it’s April 1st, fool! march madness is over, right?


    South Carolina Gamecocks Coach Dawn Staley

    says two more games!

    The month of March may be over, but the Madness of NCAA basketball has one last hurrah this weekend. The Final Four for the women will be played in the frozen tundra that is more generally known as Minneapolis, Minnesota under the Friday night lights of Target Center in the heart of the downtown district on April Fool’s Day, 2022.

    The Gamecock women have been ranked #1 in the nation during the 2021-2022 season with a record of 33 wins and 2 losses. They will play the Louisville Cardinals (29-4) in the semi-final.

    Pretty and I love women’s basketball – the game is part of our inherited DNA in our respective families that became a jointly shared passion in the Dawn Staley era at our alma mater. Coach Staley has ignited not only the University of South Carolina fan base but also the love of the sport across the nation with attendance increases for women’s basketball programs everywhere. Thank you, Coach. Onward.

    Ella and me going into Greensboro,

    North Carolina Regional this past weekend

    (first weekend overnite for Pretty and me with our granddaughter)

    Ella’s favorite discovery at the game was Lay’s Potato Chips

    (she is her Nana’s granddaughter for sure –

    Pretty never met a potato chip she didn’t love)

    Ella’s mother Pretty Too a/k/a Caroline told Pretty yesterday that when she rocked Ella to sleep the night before, Ella whispered defense, defense. Caroline was so startled she asked Ella what she was saying, and Ella shouted DEFENSE. That’s our girl. She’s going to be a true Gamecock.

    Special shoutouts to our basketball buddies who have shared another special season with the Gamecock women, Pretty and me: Garner, JD, Brian, Joan, Robert, Susan, Chris, Pat, Number One Son Drew, 2.5 year old Ella, the Upstate Double Ds Darlene and Dawne…Brenda, Tony, Baby Dawn and her mothers in front of us, Jennifer R and Lisa – you all cheered throughout the journey. It’s been a great ride.

    I would be in big trouble if I failed to mention the men’s basketball teams also have their own Final Four this weekend, and my most faithful reader Dick Hubbard’s North Carolina Tar Heels will play archrival Duke tomorrow night in their semi-final in New Orleans. This is the first year in our 40-year friendship both Dick and I have had teams we passionately pull for in the Final Four. When he called me this morning to remind me, I said I hoped this didn’t mean one of us might be checking the score from St. Peter’s gate.

    Whether you follow the Final Four with your personal bracket or don’t follow basketball at all, enjoy the first weekend in April and please stay tuned.

    Go Gamecocks!

  • two singular American warrior women: one shared destiny

    two singular American warrior women: one shared destiny


    Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s parents, Johnny and Ellery Brown, have had a front row seat at their 51 year old daughter’s confirmation proceedings to be appointed the first Black woman to the United States Supreme Court during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s public hearings this week. Their faces remained noncommittal, even stoic, when their daughter’s faith, views on pornography, questions of character were attacked by the Republican Senators in the room.

    The confirmation hearings that began with President Joe Biden’s nomination of Judge Jackson had a zoo-like quality with the zookeeper a/k/a Chairman Dick Durbin doing his best to maintain order – decorum was out the window. Johnny and Ellery Brown had undoubtedly seen worse behavior as natives of Miami growing up in the Jim Crow South but as public school teachers in Washington, D.C. they had also seen the impact of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s which gave their children more opportunities for success. Judge Jackson was born on September 14, 1970 in Washington, D.C.

    When Judge Jackson was 27 years old in 1997, a woman named Madeleine Albright, who then President Bill Clinton had nominated to become the first female Secretary of State, went through her own Senate confirmation hearings in an atmosphere much less combative than the circus she was forced to endure. Republican Senator Jesse Helms who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee led then United Nations Ambassador Albright through the process that ended in a unanimous Senate vote to confirm. Wow. Those were the days.

    Madeleine Albright was born on May 15, 1937 in Prague, Czechoslovokia (now the Czech Republic). In 1939 the Nazi occupation forced her family to become refugees in England, but they returned home after World War II; only to flee again when the communist coup occurred. Her father Josef Korbel had been a member of the Czechoslovokian diplomatic service and sentenced to death by the communist regime. The second time her family fled Madeleine and her mother Anna took a ship to Ellis Island in November, 1948; Josef joined them later. They eventually settled in Denver, Colorado where Josef accepted a postion at the University of Denver.

    Madeleine Albright’s storied career represents to me the best of America. To be “the first” woman in any field, to be known as a woman who “tells it like it is,” to successfully navigate the political land mines of our nation’s Capitol to serve our country in an ever changing world – these are accomplishments we celebrate; but to achieve as an outsider, a refugee, demands our highest honors including the Presidential Medal of Freedom bestowed by President Barack Obama in 2012.

    Madeleine Albright died yesterday, March 23, 2022 following a long battle with an enemy we all know: cancer.

    The first woman ever called Madam Secretary of State left us as the first Black woman battled for her position on the Supreme Court in a contentious, even embarrassing at times, public hearing while her parents, husband, daughters, brother and others watched. The coincidental timing was remarkable to me.

    Yet I had a spirit of hope for the future when I heard Judge Jackson’s answers to the questions posed yesterday, a glimmer of hope for equality and fairness for my granddaughters. I also felt that same spirit of hope in the legacy Madeleine Albright leaves, her persistence in pursuing freedom for all nations, the world peace she strived for. I salute both of these warrior women during Women’s History Month for their shared destiny, for the heritage we can honor by emulating their courage in our own outrageous acts of everyday rebellions.

    Onward.

  • the battle my grandmother lost

    the battle my grandmother lost


    March is Women’s History Month. I planned to write a new post today to celebrate a universally celebrated woman, but I have two excuses for re-blogging this post from February, 2019: (1) I was glued to the televised Senate confirmation hearings for a Supreme Court nominee by President Biden of a Black woman, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who I sincerely believe will one day be universally celebrated (2) I unabashedly celebrate one of the women who was certainly not well known beyond Grimes and Walker County, Texas but a woman who loved me dearly for as long as she lived.

    my early years in my hometown of rural Richards, Texas

    (circa 1949)

    my dad and me at a family picnic in matching shirts

    made by my grandmother (circa 1951)

    a birthday party dress made by my grandmother (circa 1951)

    my grandmother made this dress and a  picture postcard of me

    for her family Easter card in 1949

    Bless her heart. My grandmother tried and tried to reshape my fashions which upon reflection she probably hoped would reshape my life. One of the most dreaded phrases my mother ever spoke to me – the one that made me cringe-was “Your grandmother is making you a new dress and needs you to walk down to her house to try it on. No arguments, no whining, just go.”

    I absolutely hated to stand on her little stool while she endlessly pinned away to make sure  the pattern she bought from a grand clothing store in the much bigger town of Navasota  fit perfectly on my small body. She pulled, tugged here and there, made me turn around as she measured whatever cloth she had purchased when she bought the pattern. I prayed silently that the aroma I smelled was her pineapple fried pies…the only possible redemption from the hell of being poked and prodded for a new dress I didn’t want to wear.

    My grandmother Betha Day Robinson Morris and I lived within shouting distance of each other in the tiny town (pop. about 500) of Richards until my dad found a new job that took us out of the place I called home when I was 13 years old. Our new home in Brazoria was less than two hours from Richards so we came back every other week for most of my teenage years. Distance did not deter my grandmother from her sewing, however.

    She usually managed to have something for me to try on whenever we visited. I finally surrendered to her passion for sewing because as I grew older I came to understand sewing was an important part of her life, but to this day I dread hearing Pretty say she brought something home for me to try on.

    my grandmother surveys her granddaughters

    before Easter Sunday church services in 1963

    I was 17 years old and wearing a dress my grandmother made for me

    while my younger cousin Melissa modeled her store-bought outfit

    My grandmother continued to sew for me until I was in my twenties. Every Christmas she wrapped a large box in her best wrapping paper and favorite bow saved from the previous Christmas to give to me. I always opened with feigned surprise at the dress she made for me to wear to church and praised her for being able to still find the perfect pattern and material for me even when I wasn’t there to try it on.

    I’ll never forget the last time I opened a gift of clothing she made for me. She had made a pants suit – unbelievable. I could see she was pleased with herself for breaking from the dress tradition she wanted me to wear to making the pants she now understood would forever be my choice of clothes. The year was 1968 – I was 22 years old – my grandmother would have been 55. The pants suit represented a rite of passage for both of us.

    Unfortunately, I never could bring myself to wear the pants suit which was made with a hideous polyester fabric and a horrible bright green and white large zig zag pattern. I couldn’t bring myself to wear it, but I carried it with me around the country wherever I moved for the next 30 years. I would carefully hang it in my closet as a daily reminder of  the love my grandmother gave me for as long as she lived.

    My grandmother Betha was a flawed individual but what I wouldn’t give today to hear my mother say “Sheila Rae, your grandmother is making you a new dress and wants you to try it on. No arguments, no whining, just go.”

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

    P.S. When our granddaughter Ella gets new clothes, she can’t wait to try them on! Her mother Pretty Too has a friend Nicole who has a sewing machine and recently taught herself how to sew in a week – my grandmother would have been very impressed with that.