GFMorris.com

The horrible thing about life is the failures we all have in living up to expectations.

For example, my biggest failure in life—to hear some tell it—is that I never call or visit my grandmother.

I don’t know that I can blame her, really. My grandfather, God bless him, died in 1990. My mom’s folks got married in … 1947, if memory serves. Anyway, it was after War Two, after my grandfather had spent time in Burma and other places. Since then, my grandmother’s remaining siblings have either moved away or died [well, Uncle Ned moved away and then he passed on]. Since not long into my freshman year of college, my grandmother hasn’t had anyone close to her.

Except me.

When I transferred from Podunk Forest High to MSMS back in 1995, my grandmother had visions of me coming to visit her, oh, once a month. My mental reply then was, “Fat chance.” I had my parents wanting me to come and visit often, and I really did need to visit them semi-regularly to maintain the bond I had with them. That was a damn tough time for my family: Doug graduated from USM in June, officially Moved Out, and started his new life that summer; Dad took on a new job down in Waynesboro in the hopes that it would go well [it didn't], moving down there in what we thought was an advance party in July; and I moved to Columbus in August. As Mom famously noted, “In eight weeks, I went from having all my boys at home to just having the dog.” Our little house on U.S. 80 ended up being a Grand Central Station of Morris boys coming home to visit.

As such, when I did leave Columbus, it was to go to Forest. Now, I won’t draw you a map or pull one out, but it was 158 miles to Forest. It’s only about 85 or so to where my grandmother lives here in Alabama. You can do the math on that one and see who felt left out.

Let’s fast-forward to college. I moved to Huntsville. It’s a shade over 100 miles from here to her house [literally, it's over the [Tennessee] River and through the woods]. Mom and Dad moved to [the place in the Delta that shall not be named], which was over 300 miles away. [I forget how far, really, because I've blocked it out. But I know that it was over 300 because I had to stop for gas.] Given my pattern, guess who got more visits? You guessed it.

Now, these are my parents. I love them dearly. They read this site. They even comment on it. I’m not kow-towing to them because I know that they’ll read this; I’m simply stating the truth: as an Air Force brat, I’m very close to my parents because they’re all the family I’ve ever really known. Everyone else&emdash;aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins&emdash;have been bit actors. This isn’t meant to be cruel; for any of my extended family somehow reading this [with a name as easily Googled-for as mine, that's a strong probability], this isn’t a slight against you. Y’all know that I love you and care, but it’s just that we’ve always had … distance.

I think things wouldn’t be like this if we hadn’t, as a family, not somewhat kept that distance when we moved back to the South. Sure, we visited more often than we did in the Air Force days&emdash;back then, we were good for Christmas with one set of family, and Thanksgiving with the other; we rotated years&emdash;but it’s not like we went every month. We spent time as a family … a nuclear family. Why? Probably because it’s all we’d really known.

Now, I can’t begin to describe the bonds in our little family of four. Even thinking on it on the surface makes me start to cry. Health concerns have hit both my parents in the last couple years, and I know that having them around is really precious. Still, do I visit or call as often as I should? If I’m honest, I probably don’t. In fact, I haven’t called them since I’ve gotten home from my business trip [sorry, guys]. But we do talk on the phone on average of once every five or so days, and I do try to visit whenever work doesn’t have me tied up.

But here’s the thing … it does that pretty regular.

When I was in school, work [and trying to maintain a social life] forced my homework to the weekends. Now, work simply invades my weekends; I’ll need to go in on a Saturday to check on things I didn’t get accomplished Monday-Friday in an effort to not get behind.

The reply to this? “It’s how you choose to spend your time.” I hate to say it, though, but “I have a life now, and while you’re a part of it, that’s it … just a part.” That’s cold and cruel, and it bothers me to even think it, but … it’s true. My parents know this … they know that the son they raised got raised pretty damn well, and now they have to deal with the results of that&emdash;an engineer who has responsibilities to his job and a church member who has responsibilities to his church. That makes my life be in Huntsville, which isn’t where they live. I’m sure they lament this, but all parents do lament the passing of their children into adulthood.

And looking at the joy of new parents and the wonder of new children, it’s no wonder that they lament! Who wants that bundle of joy you brought home to ever grow up? I’m sure that my friends Stephen and Misty want to bottle this year, the first of their son Eli’s life, and hold onto it forever. Never again will he be so dependent upon them and so joy-giving. He’ll stay joy-giving but also be frustration-inducing, questioning, and annoying&emdash;all those things that little kids can be.

I know I’ve grown up in what seems like a flash. Just the other day, my friend Dan was asking me to follow him through on some trigonometry. I stopped and thought, “Now, when did I have trig?” I arrived at a scary answer: fall of my sophomore year of high school. 1994. “It’s been ten years!” I shrieked to myself. [Not totally; you use a lot of trig in mechanics, which means it got regular, heavy workouts until I finished with those classes sophomore year of college. Of course, that was over five years ago. I rest my case.] I thought of all the changes since then, and said to myself, “Wow, kids grow up fast.”

And we do!

I’m afraid that this entire … whatever … is losing complete focus, so I’ll bring it together a bit. I know that my folks would like me to visit them more, but the thing is that I can’t do it very often and keep the life I’ve been living. Have I made other things my priority? That’s fair to say. God, family, and TBE are still my priorities: God as Provider and Sustainer; family most clearly in the sense of my parents; TBE in terms of being the talented young engineer that all my family seems to want to brag about.

But words were uttered that angered me: “You just don’t care about your family anymore.” That’s patently wrong, and I told her so.

Then I hung up.

That’s why I’m Grandson of the Year, 2004.

I don’t want pity [though I'm pitiful]. I just want understanding … and peace.