Holding Serve

Tennis is a sport that requires fierce, man-to-man combat.  It elicits the very best and the very worst from its athletes, with absolutely no room for the fearful or weak.  Through some 30+ years of spectatorship and study of this sport, I have seen a lot of balls bounced, witnessed a lot of excellence, and suffered through some dismal displays of ill humor and incompetence.  In short:  I know the sort of play I like.

Last Friday, far too soon, we lost a friend and fellow competitor, a young man whom I had seen grow and develop over the years, from towheaded little bounce-about to handsome young adult, confident and sure.

Bradley Ross Boling
4/5/90 - 2/17/12

Bradley Ross was the type of player I like to watch.  I could pick him out from three courts over, even with the sun in my eyes and a brisk wind whipping around the fence posts, and I would make my way over there in anticipation.  Never once did he let me down.

He stepped out on the court with the sturdy, rolling gait of a surefooted sailor--he looked ready and he was.  From first warm-up to final handshake Bradley Ross was in battle mode, and I can see him now--poised athletic stance, racquet up and ready, eyes straight ahead, flashing with energy.

When he played, his hair bounced in a way that was specific only to him--we could pick him out by that hair bounce.  He was quick, like a cat, and his workmanlike game reminded those who watched of Boris Becker or other stocky Germans who play with a gritty, stoic, unbeatable fire.

He played offensively, attacking the net and moving forward, always up on the balls of his feet, quick to find his way home with racquet back and ready to keep the ball in play, and then, in a flash, he'd be back up there again, smashing the ball down the throat of some unwitting foe.

He grew up in a tennis family, rooted in a long line of players, and the day I took this picture his whole family celebrated, lit up with happiness by a regional victory, not only for Bradley Ross, but for the entire Bowling Green High boys' team.  I will never forget the unbridled joy on his father's face, and I am glad I was there to see it.

My husband and I watched Bradley Ross play many times.  After every single match I would look up at him and say, "I love to watch him play."

And I did, I really did.

Boob Tube

When I was a child I loved to read TV Guide.  I loved the gritty cheap paper, the way the pages rustled against each other as I riffled through each week, looking for especially artsy films I couldn't begin to understand, or checking for ABC After School Specials.  I liked the little red-n-white television set in the corner of the cover, the tightly packed row after row of channel, program, date, time, and movie star minutiae that filled every single page.

More than the Guide, I loved TV. All of it.  I even loved ABC Wide World of Sports with Jim McKay and his Timex watches, Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom (I wanted one of Jim Fowler's cool safari jackets with the handy pockets), Captain Kangaroo, Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, Midnight Express and Soul Train, (RIP Don Cornelius)...you name it, I would watch it.

Fast forward forty-plus years and I still have plenty of television pleasures--I indulge in my fair share of ESPN, American Idol, What Not to Wear, and Kelly (she just keeps getting thinner, poor thing).  Bottom line:  a television prude I am not.

But tonight I came across some mildly unobtrusive, even reserved, words penned in 1938 and they gave me pause.

"...I believe television is going to be the test of the modern world....We shall stand or fall by television--of that I am quite sure."                                                                                      E.B. White 


Television as we know it didn't even exist in 1938.  E.B. White was a fairly well-connected man--and somehow those connections had, two years earlier, provided him with the rare opportunity to observe the transmission of sound and image from one room to another.

The observation of that naive little transfer a mere handful of feet was enough for White's no-nonsense New England mind to grasp the global magnitude of this new invention and to question what we, in our childishly grasping need to be pacified, would become.

White goes on to note, succinctly and without melodrama, that with the addition of the Elsewhere, we will become ever more oblivious to the Here, to the what, to the why, of our own daily lives.  Because if it's there, of course we have to look.

As they say on GMA, what's everybody going to be talking about at the water cooler?  I don't want to be the one lone dweeb, standing there clutching my sad little cup of break room coffee, with no idea who made it to Hollywood, or who got a rose, or who hit the three-pointer at the buzzer.  Not me.

And here is what I miss:

And this:

And, more importantly, this:

Whistling in the Dark

photo courtesy of Jenna Binion

I have a hard time letting go.  Just ask my kids--three of whom have already flown the coop--number four is in the driveway with the engine revved and ready, counting down the seconds to graduation, and five isn't far behind.  As the day draws near, the maternal clutch grows ever more white around the knuckles.

Same premise holds for certain writing projects, only the struggle isn't so much the letting go as it is the getting started.  The knuckles are just as white.

Portia's Protocol for Not Writing (for non-writers, this plan may easily be applied to any new undertaking):

1.  Have an idea.

2.  Toy with the idea, like a dog with a bone, until any shred of meat that might have proven useful has long since been removed.

3. Scratch, scribble, scratch, scribble.  Mark it all out.  Tear it all up.  Put the offending digital file in the handy little trash can at the bottom of one's computer screen.

4. In the wee hours decide that the idea was never very good anyway.

5. Go to the library, the bookstore, on-line, your own bookshelf, and make a huge pile of books that you must/should read/re-read before ever trying to write again.

It works every time.   Cling to any idea long enough and it's bound to become ridiculous.

A wise man once told me you wouldn't even buy a color TV set if you waited until the time was exactly right, much less have a baby--I certainly took those words to heart and leapt off the precipice into motherhood five times over with very little planning.

I have more faith in my ability to bring another human being into this crazy world than another piece of writing.

The same premise holds true for any major undertaking in life:  college, a new job, marriage, any creative work of art--if you wait for the time to be exactly right, for all the closets to be cleaned, the credit cards to be completely paid off, the insurance policies to be precisely executed with the lowest possible deductible, you will stay exactly where you are.  In a comfy chair with the remote control.

Today's visit to the library brought the perfect words regarding this paralytic condition into my hands:

"[faith and fiction] both start with a leap in the dark.....Faith is less a

        position on than a movement toward, less a sure thing than a hunch."

                                                                        - Frederick Buechner


Here goes.

Just Touching Base

February 6, 2012


Dear Friend,

     How’s your February?  The Super Bowl is over and I have a little down time between now and Valentine’s Day, so thought I’d jot you a note.  
I’m doing this thing called “A Month of Letters” where I try to send at least one letter every day.
Well, I’ve already messed up and I didn’t write a single letter on Saturday, so I made up for it and wrote one letter and two postcards last night after little Eli took care of business.
    An old friend from college (he’s so old) said he probably wouldn’t write me a letter but would a video with lots of envelopes and words count?  He sent me the link, and it way more than counts (thanks, Mike).
       If you like words, stamps, envelopes (AND a great song that Cassie and I blast out in the 4-runner every single day, me singing at the top of my very tuneless lungs), then you have to watch this.

Watch it.  You will be glad you did.  Then get out a piece of paper and write a letter.  

Write it because this is the point:


“Our differences, they do a lot to teach us how to use
 the tools and gifts we got, yeah, we got a lot at stake
 and in the end, you’re still my friend.
 We had to learn how to bend without the world
 caving in…”


Because we do have a lot at stake—each other.


Love,
Portia

Better than Bills

Dear Friend,

When I was a kid, I had an address book.  Doesn't every second grader need such an item?  Good little bespectacled nerd that I was, I actually used it--because more than an address book, I wanted a pen pal.  I even made a few childish attempts at keeping correspondence going--with a friend who moved to Florida after our 2nd or 3rd grade year, and then later, with another friend who moved to Illinois the summer I was thirteen.  Both attempts foundered.  I can't recall who dropped the pen first, just that eventually the letters stopped coming and going.

As much as we all enjoy a good e-mail--the speed, the easy casual camaraderie or the brisk business-like relay of data--nothing can or ever will compare to the many pleasures of a letter.  I have a friend who has spent countless hours photocopying six hundred pages of family letters, organizing them into ring binders, so other family members can have them to keep and enjoy.  Think anybody will be copying e-mails a hundred years from now?  Heck no--an e-mail doesn't even last a good day!

To support my habit, I recently bought a box of somebody else's family letters at a local junk store.  Just what I need--more paper--paper to which I have not one whit of historical or emotional connection.  I had to have them--that flowing script and small window into another life was too hard to pass up.

To wit, I am hereby issuing a personal invitation to you, to join me in A Month of Letters .  It's simple.  It's easy.  It can be as meaningful as you want it to be, or as happily inane as the most slapdash of jotted notes.  The important thing is it's in your handwriting (penmanship is not the point--the movement of the hand across the page is), and the good old USPS is charged with its delivery.

Write to whomever you please--friends, family, enemies (if you are brave!).  The editor of the paper or the customer service department at your favorite snack food company.  Your dental hygienist probably never gets a thank you note--or the guy in the window at the dry cleaner--or the dude who sprays off your car at the car wash.  Just write.

These letters will mean something in a way an e-mail or a tweet could never even begin to touch--they will be personal, they will take time (to write, to receive, to respond to).  

And they will last.  In a box, under a bed; in a drawer; in a closet.  They will last.

Yours,

Portia

P.S.  Some of my favorite novels are "epistolary"--stories told through letters.  If you feel like dipping into one, check out Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith (one of my all-time favorites), or the soon-to-be-released Same Sun Here by fellow Kentuckian Silas House and Neela Vaswani.