Correspondents from as far away as California! and Vancouver, WA! have written to demand updates. And when Neverwinter Nights 2 hard-crashed while loading this evening, I thought, This is it, this is a sign, this is the Compuweb Intertubes telling me that I have failed in my obligations to fans of the Gusblog and must make amends, for ever and ever, amen. So here we are. Ready? This is a long one.
Father, it has been twenty-five days since my last post, and even longer since my last post with pictures. So much to say.
Over Thanksgiving, as promised, we went to my ancestral homeland, where we encountered such Southern hospitality as to not only overflow the cliches but to make those of us raised in the casual, manners-free Northwest feel as though we really were raised in caves, picking nits from each other and combing our hair with pinecones. In a certain sense, this is all true. But The Gus got to meet his extended family, which extends far, and most importantly, got to meet his great-grandfather Lawson. The Gus is Lawson’s first great-grandchild. Lawson is The Gus’s first great-grandfather.
When I was born (Lawson’s first grandchild, born of his first child) my sainted mother asked him what he wanted me, thegusdad, to call him — grandfather, grandpa, etc. “I’m too young to have a grandson,” he replied. “He can call me Lawson, like everyone else.” So he has always been Lawson to me.
Unrelated anecdote: when Lawson was perhaps seventy-five, an old wrist injury (a relic of a college stunt gone awry) made it so painful that he could no longer play tennis with his regular foursome, a foursome he had played doubles with for many years if not many decades. His solution? He switched hands.
Those of you who have played sports have a glimmer here of what I’m saying. He stopped holding he racquet in the same hand that he had used for he past sixty years and just used his left hand. This reflects a certain determination, a certain stubbornness.
Even now, when I feel myself digging my heels in, refusing to give on an issue where someone who is not me might (and maybe should) compromise, I feel my mouth getting thin, tipping slightly down at the corners. If I should cacth a glance of myself in a window, or a mirror, Holy smokes, that’s a Lawson look, I think.
But he took it a step further. And a personal testimonial here: I saw him play left-handed, in his seventies. He played better tennis than anyone in his mid-seventies has a right to play. But Lawson eventually grew so frustrated with his level of play — left-handed play — that he went back to playing right-handed. Bursitis and all. I asked him once if it hurt. “Sure, it hurts,” he said. I didn’t think it was necessary to probe deeper.
But Lawson is not just a creature of will. He is gallant and loyal and devoted to his family, all qualities that The Gus and I can admire and emulate. He is also a beautiful singer and a connoisseur of classical music, which is a cause probably lost to this particular branch of Lawson’s family, but The Gus is a hope for all.
But more expansively, our trip south was a wonder for The Gus. He encountered his first tennis court, and came to reckon with his status as a member of a family in which tennis is a religion. Not a religion in the sense of services on Sunday, but in the cultural sense, where religion pervades all. He heard the call of the muezzins, and came unto his first tennis court.
And his first tennis ball.
And he found a true autumn, where leaves fall from the hardwoods and get dry and accumulate into piles so deep that they call out, they require disassembly of the piles, and insertion of their constituent leaves into the tennis-ball cans for which they were intended.
The Gus met all my first cousins. Readers, please help: does that make them The Gus’s second cousins once removed? If not, what are they, besides awesome?
He encountered that staple of Southern life, the screened porch, and found that it was good.
And leaving The Gus, for a moment. I learned something about my brother, which of course means I learned something about myself. We grew up playing tennis, though we became serious about it at the same time, and he is four years younger. Somewhere around the end of high school, I burned out on competitive tennis, and hung up the racquet but for occasional knocking around. He never did. He played on his college team, and plays now in a USTA league. I knew all that.
But what I learned on this trip is a couple of things I had not seen, things I had not seen because I had been oblivious. First, my little brother is all grown up. He doesn’t follow me around anymore, begging for attention. He doesn’t need to. He has a grace about him in social situations that is so different as to seem alien. Second, he plays beautiful tennis. When I was growing up, we got Tennis magazine. There was a section designed to improve one small aspect of the reader’s game –forehand offensive lob, backhand half-volley — through illustrations of the proper form to be used in a given stroke. These illustrations were sometimes sequenced photos of teaching pros, but often featured shots of the professionals of the day in action. Lendl, Becker, Chang. Edberg. Oh gosh, Edberg.
My brother plays tennis like those shots illustrating perfect form. I am not exaggerating when I say not one player in five hundred plays the game the way he does. It’s the sort of game where you don’t even watch the ball, you just watch him.
And I was humbled.
I digress: back to The Gus. Here is a gratuitous shot of him being adorable.
And him in context of four generations:
One last one:
Come back soon. The Gus and I will make it worth your while.
