Days of Grace

by Arthur Ashe

  Not right now, but in a few short years, you will begin to take an increasing interest in boys. Not long after that, if I am not around, you will think Mommy is cruelly ruining your social life because of the restrictions she will place on you concerning them. In your rush to be treated as an adult, you may want to try supposedly adult things: driving, staying out late, drinking alcohol, indulging in drugs, gambling, and sex. As your father, I am particularly concerned about alcohol, drugs, and sex. I have seen so many lives ruined by alcohol and drugs that they must be mentioned separately. Because it is so widely accepted and so easily available, alcohol in particular can be a curse. In our family, Camera, several people were alcoholics, and they and others suffered terribly as a result. Sex is one of God’s precious gifts, which is not to be treated cavalierly by men or women. When it is time, choose your partner and the occasion with care. Do not allow yourself to be seduced and then cast off and forgotten, as many women tragically are.

  I want you to nurture an appreciation of music and the arts. When I was young, I played in my junior-high-school and high-school band for six years and developed a love of music and a persisting wonder that human beings can create and execute such wonderful melodies and harmonies. In my high-school concert each spring, we dressed in formal white jackets and bow ties and played music from Duke Ellington to Beethoven. In our collection of record albums at home you will find music from around the world, collected by me in my travels. Often, when I think of a place, music comes to mind: trumpets for Great Britain, violins for Austria and Germany, flutes for the Middle East, pianos for France, and finger pianos for West Africa; I think of drums for the American Indians, mandolins for Italy, castanets for Spain, cymbals for Japan, fiddles for our slave forebears. Each sound is like the signature of a place and its people. Each is a part of the harmony of the world.

  I have always been moved by art, and by poetry. Don’t let anyone tell you that either one is frivolous or expendable, or inferior to making money. Without either, and music, life would be dry and without feeling. Art comes from an urge as primal as that of survival itself. While I resist the idea that European art is the sole standard for the rest of the world, some of its works move me to tears. The Pietà at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, for example, captures in its sculptural complexity about as much sorrow as can be invested in a piece of stone. Great art makes the inanimate live. This gift is from God, and you should revere it in others and in yourself, if you should have it.

  Camera, have faith in God. Do not be tempted either by pleasures and material possessions, or by the claims of science and smart thinkers, into believing that religion is obsolete, that the worship of God is somehow beneath you. Spiritual nourishment is as important as physical nourishment, or intellectual nourishment. The religion you choose is not nearly as important as a fundamental faith in God. As a child, I went to Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Baptist churches; later, I went to a Catholic church because I was living with a family who worshiped there. Mommy herself is a Catholic and goes to mass, as you know. These and other religions, some of them outside of Christianity, are all roads that lead to God. Beyond the different dogmas must be a sense of yourself as created by God for a purpose, and as being under God’s law at all times. Be ruled by that rule called golden: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. Do not beg God for favors. Instead, ask God for the wisdom to know what is right, what God wants done, and the will to do it. Know the Bible. Read the psalms and the Sermon on the Mount and everything else in that timeless book. You will find consolation in your darkest hours. You will find inscribed there the meaning of life and the way you should live. You will grow into a deeper understanding of life’s meanings. Religions sometimes clash and compete, but there is a reservoir of truth and guidance in the Bible that is beyond controversy and is always available to you.

  Camera, as frenzied as is my world, yours will feel even more hurried and frantic. Technology is expanding as never before; the instruments of change are everywhere. You will often feel that you don’t have enough time to do what you want to do. Make time. Control time; do not let time control you any more than it must. Balance the activity of your life. My father lived a simple yet pleasant life. A happy man, he worked hard but looked forward to fishing when the season rolled around. Of course, he wasn’t faced by as many temptations as I have been or you will be. Don’t try to do everything. Choose carefully, and then give your all to what you choose. And please try to become expert at something, so that others will look to you as a human resource.

  I end, Camera, as I began, with family. In nearly every civilization of which I have heard, the family is the central social unit, the base and foundation of the culture. You are a member of the eleventh identifiable generation of a family on my side and the fourth generation on your mother’s side. We have tried to prepare you as best we can to lead as happy and productive a life as possible. Along the way you will stumble, and perhaps even fall; but that, too, is normal and to be expected. Get up, get back on your feet, chastened but wiser, and continue on down the road.

  I may not be walking with you all the way, or even much of the way, as I walk with you now. Don’t be angry with me if I am not there in person, alive and well, when you need me. I would like nothing more than to be with you always. Do not feel sorry for me if I am gone. When we were together, I loved you deeply and you gave me so much happiness I can never repay you. Camera, wherever I am when you feel sick at heart and weary of life, or when you stumble and fall and don’t know if you can get up again, think of me. I will be watching and smiling and cheering you on.