I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

storytelling for truth lovers

  • Pretty quoted Poe – that was a shocker

    Pretty quoted Poe – that was a shocker


    Once upon a time long ago and far away – but not too far away – I was in hot pursuit of Pretty who was clearly out of my lesbian league. In an attempt to impress her with my heat by being ultra cool, I recited love poems to her including one of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s most famous Sonnets from the Portuguese. You know the one. How do I love thee, let me count the ways.

    How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
    I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
    My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
    For the ends of being and ideal grace.
    I love thee to the level of every day’s
    Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
    I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
    I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
    I love thee with the passion put to use
    In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
    I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
    With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
    Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
    I shall but love thee better after death.

    Who could resist such a passionate declaration of undying love, I thought, and who wouldn’t be impressed by someone who quoted poetry with no prompts.

    I was stunned the night I professed Browning’s promises to Pretty who didn’t miss a beat before responding with Edgar Allan Poe’s Annabel Lee

    It was many and many a year ago,
       In a kingdom by the sea,
    That a maiden there lived whom you may know
       By the name of Annabel Lee;
    And this maiden she lived with no other thought
       Than to love and be loved by me.

    I was a child and she was a child,
       In this kingdom by the sea,
    But we loved with a love that was more than love—
       I and my Annabel Lee—

    And, then, of course Pretty went on for the entire six stanzas, three with six lines, one with seven lines and two with eight. My sonnet looked weak by comparison. Sigh. Pretty was definitely out of my league.

    She still is, but miraculously twenty years later How Do I Love Thee was enough.

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    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.


  • how could I skip when I was two and seventy

    how could I skip when I was two and seventy


    Three years ago I published these reflections (with pictures) a week before my 72nd. birthday. I don’t know why, but I thought they deserved a second read. We’ll see what you think?

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    I had a very sweet Happy Birthday message today on my Columbia High Class of 1964 (Texas) message board from one of my boyfriends who I noticed sent me birthday greetings for the past 3 years on this website which I never check. Thanks so much to Tim for remembering me. I immediately went to Facebook and added him as a friend so that I can send him birthday greetings on whatever day his might be. I confess I have been remiss in wishing others a Happy Birthday unless I am prompted to do so by the Big Brother of Facebook who is forever watching over me.

    I am struck by how soon my 72nd. birthday will be…April 21, one week from today. Sweet Lady Gaga, as The Red Man famously said, how did this happen. My first birthday card came from my personal Medicine Man Dr. Martin and his entire staff. These are the people who see me most frequently, and I appreciated the Life is Meant to Live and be Celebrated sentiments. I figure if they’re hopeful for my future, I should be, too.

    I’ve received not one, but two, birthday cards from former President Jimmy Carter and the Carter Center, both of which were quite lovely and one signed by the President himself. Why two, you might ask, as I did. And then, of course, my bank ATM machines have been unusually prompt on good wishes whenever I’ve made withdrawals in April which I assume has something to do with their corporate guilt for the outrageous service charges they favor me with every month.

    The message board for the 1964 Columbia High School graduating class in West Columbia, Texas took me back 54 years to that senior year when I was about to graduate from high school and leave my little town of Brazoria, Texas that was 15 miles from the Gulf Coast for summer school at the University of Texas in Austin 90 miles away. Big changes were on the way for me, but take a look at the images of my senior year when I was voted by my fully segregated all white 90+ students class as the Best All Round favorite, or as my dad invariably teased me by saying, she was the best all the way around.

    Return with me to those thrilling days of yesteryear when my mother was always so happy for me to be dating a boy.

    Note particularly the hands and feet

    (Poor photographer – he must have spent hours on that pose)

    (our mascot was the Roughneck)

    I am the one on the far left with fist pumped

    (one of the original fist pumpers)

    Senior prom

    (different boyfriend, Kerry, who gave a huge corsage)

    my mother rolled my hair until I left for college

    Note black and white striped shirt – 

    I was calling a junior high basketball game. 

    Yes, that’s right.  A teenager in public with my hair rolled.

    Mom made it a condition of my going to the gym.

     

    Senior Follies – and they were

    I sang an unremarkable rendition of the St. Louis Blues,

    but the bright yellow fringe dress was memorable.

    my lifelong love of tennis began here…

    on real tennis courts. Hard cement. 

    But I saw myself playing at Wimbledon.

    …and basketball, too

    as Coach Knipling used to say about my game,

    Sheila is short and slow, but she can shoot a free throw

    and of course, the political

    deals were struck between me

    and my good friend Leon

    who made an awesome VP

    The photos today are courtesy of me with my cell phone and my yearbook so quality leaves much to be desired, but you get the general idea of this 18-year-old baby dyke trying her best to be straight but  unknowingly about to add complexity to her sexual awareness through life in a women’s dormitory at the state’s largest university where the population of the dorm was greater than the population of the town where she grew up. Talk about trouble.

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    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

  • in case you missed these amazing Olympians

    in case you missed these amazing Olympians


    (from Forbes Business online August 05, 2021)

    “There Are More Openly LGBTQ+ Olympians At Tokyo 2020 Than All Other Games Combined…

    BIG NUMBER: 182. That’s at least how many openly LGBTQ+ athletes there are competing at the Tokyo 2020 Games, according to Outsports. In Rio, there were 56. In London, 23.”

     

    Openly gay Raven Saunders of Charleston, South Carolina celebrates after winning Silver Medal in shot put competition. (Reuters, Dylan Martinez photo)

    This afternoon Raven returns home to Charleston but will not be greeted by her number one fan and sacrificing supporter, her mother, who died on August 03rd. in Orlando, Florida where she and Raven’s younger sister Tanzania were attending a watch party for Athletes of Team USA. For Raven the loss of her mother is one that causes her “heart and soul to cry out” as she posted on social media earlier this week. Any daughter, LGBTQ+ or straight, can understand the pain we feel when the woman who gave us life is no longer with us. Pretty and I send prayers for comfort to the family of Clarissa Saunders during these difficult days.

    Our family also extends our gratitude to Raven Saunders and the remainder of the out LGBTQ+ athletes competing in the Tokyo Olympics. Whether you won a medal in your sport or didn’t, you are all winners to us every time you have the courage to proudly proclaim who you are in your own back yard or on an international Olympic stage.

    Onward.

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    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.

  • Unrelated: Olympics and Bee Stings

    Unrelated: Olympics and Bee Stings


    Haiku #1

    The final athletes

    Stand on podium, tears flow

    As they hear anthem.

    The Haiku is a Japanese poetic form dating back to the 17th. century; as we near the end of the Games of the XXXII Olympiad in Tokyo, and since I can’t speak Japanese, the least I can do is attempt their artistic expressions. The Haiku structure is for three lines: five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second line, and five syllables again in the third line. There’s probably much more to think about, but I’ll leave it to that with my apologies to the true Haiku poets.

    Haiku #2

    The athletes go home

    to face practice, to wait for

    twenty twenty-four.

    Finally, the Haiku is supposed to be written for what is going on today. In addition to the close of the Olympics, Pretty and I had a frightening day with our granddaughter. We had a picnic with Pretty’s father at a park near her Little Mountain antique mall. Papa had brought a box of mountain tomatoes which we consider a delicacy. Although rain was not in the morning forecast, the grey clouds mixed with precipitation began on our drive up the road with intermittent downpours.

    Our granddaughter Ella wasn’t bothered by the rain. We ate lunch at a covered picnic table in the park. While the adults visited, Ella was busy, going thither and yon with the fervor of a twenty-two month old child determined to explore.

    Skies cleared just long enough for group swings, as in Ella was in a playground swing with no basket, Pretty pushed her in the swing while Papa and I circled the wagons around them to prevent any unexpected dismount.

    A good time was had by all for more than hour when Papa had to leave for his home in the upstate, but Ella was not ready to go home yet. She walked a short distance to the baseball field where she had walked around a few minutes before with Papa and Pretty.

    Unfortunately for our little girl, she wandered into a dugout that had a nest of angry flying insects. She started wailing as they stung her repeatedly which caused Pretty to spring into high gear and run as fast as she could to rescue Ella. I watched in horror as Pretty shouted It’s bees. And I just got stung twice, too.

    OMG, I thought and from the look on Papa’s face, I knew he felt the same. Y’all go on, he said. I’ll clear the table.

    We took off to look for a doctor but had no luck until seeing a CVS Minute Clinic after what seemed to me to be an eternity of driving. Rural medicine in full display. Pretty raced in to the CVS but returned with the news that the pharmacists were afraid to prescribe Benadryl for a child younger than four. Our heroine Pretty did purchase Children’s Tylenol which Ella’s mother made sure we administered when she talked to Pretty on the phone. Ella slept the next half hour as Pretty drove me home.

    Haiku #3

    Cries of pain linger

    from stings of mad hornets. Too

    young to understand.

    So here’s to the weekend – good luck to the Olympians who will be putting the final touches on the games for everyone to enjoy, to the winners who will celebrate on the journey home and to those others who won’t have medals to angst over as they make the flights to their families and friends. Oh no. Both winners and losers will angst over whether those planned flights will fly.

    And here’s to our brave granddaughter who scoffs at not only the regular bumps and bruises but also the stings of a heretofore unknown enemy.

    A special “here’s to” for Pretty who was wounded as she defended our Ella in the midst of a crisis. She moved swiftly to save the day.

    At this time Ella is at home with a peace offering of vanilla ice cream. I have now reached the altered state I need to take a nap.

    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.

  • Happy Birthday!

    Happy Birthday!


    Drew, Abe, Caroline, me and Perry Como?

    Day one of Vacation in Gettysburg, Pa

    Back in the days of yesteryear – before granddaughter Ella – before even the wedding – Pretty and I got to know Caroline Jeffords on an eight-day vacation Pretty, Drew, Caroline and I took in August, 2012, as we traveled throughout the states north and east of South Carolina

    Pretty and Pretty, Too

    The trip was one of the best times of my life, and we learned much about the adult Drew and his girlfriend…not the least important of which was Caroline knew her restaurant apps, made sure we made good choices for every meal… while Drew’s favorite chocolate milkshakes ever were made at the Hershey complex in Pennsylvania.

    Part of the reason for that trip nine years ago was that both Drew and Caroline had August birthdays we celebrated on the road.

    Today is Caroline’s birthday, and it’s nine years since that awesome trip. The years have flown by with many special family times we’ve shared at holidays, birthdays, ordinary days. 

    She is now a wonderful wife, caring daughter, loving mother to her own daughter Ella who will be two years old on October 1st, and successful in her career. The young woman we got to know during that special vacation has matured, changed, thrived.

    Happy Birthday, Caroline, from the Nannas who love you. We wish you every happiness in the coming year.

    P.S. We are doubly blessed for Caroline’s twin sister Chloe who we also celebrate today. Aunt Coco, as Ella has named her, is a gem.

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    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.