Lorenzo's sweater

There once was a boy from Brasil...29 years ago, to be precise. He was a strapping young lad of exquisite good looks and, well, he became part of the family. This was supposed to be a story about a sweater. I guess it still is.

Lorenzo (and his sweater) arrived in the United States when he was 18 years of age. His father intended for him to gain an education in business so that he could return home to manage the family fortunes, which were, at the time, quite vast. Daddy also wanted his son to learn American culture.

And be a good boy while doing so.

After I left home, my parents were rattling around in a rather large house and it was a little too quiet for them. They decided to enter their names and home into the local college registry for student boarders. My mother made it clear on the application that they maintained a proper home and students boarding with them would walk the straight and narrow.

Lorenzo’s father, browsing through the various student boarding options, discovered my mother’s application and he like what he saw—especially the straight and narrow part. He arranged an interview with my parents.

The interview went more or less like this: He viewed my father, determined he was a good man, and dismissed him. He turned his full attention to my mother to find out just how upstanding a Christian woman she was. It was his opinion that it was the woman’s role to instill good values in the young ones. And, while disappointed that she was not possessed of a Catholic foundation and values, they found they were two peas in a pod where moral instruction was concerned. It was Lorenzo’s Daddy’s belief that my mother would make a fine surrogate mother for his young son. The deal was struck and Lorenzo moved in.

He was charming and sweet and kind...and a handful. Those good looks weren’t wasted on the college’s female population. And being thousands of miles away from home, he tasted the possibility of sweet freedom. He was to be disappointed. There were fireworks and slammed doors and lots of stomping, but Lorenzo had met his match. He settled down to be a proper young lad, applied himself to his studies, and discovered that my mother had eyes in the back of her head (something I could have told him.).

Nevertheless, Lorenzo managed to shock my mother, on a few occasions, with tales about life on the ranch back at home. Whether these tales were true has never been sufficiently answered, but they involved a lot of servant girls and bathtub splashing. I think they might have been true....

Because, one evening shortly after his arrival, Lorenzo drew a bath in the family bathroom. Some time later he bellowed for my mother who dashed up the stairs thinking he’d cracked his skull on something.

But no, he wanted someone to scrub his back. He was accustomed to that and he imperiously demanded it. Now.

I can only imagine the scene that ensued. But the end result was that not only would he wash his own back (and everything else. ALONE), he’d also scrub the tub after he was finished, wash his own laundry, make his bed, and hang his own clothes in the closet or else. He offered no argument. He was too stunned to do otherwise.

Lorenzo became a surrogate son, I think. My parents loved him and he loved them as well. Toward the end of his college career, he met a young woman with whom he fell head over heels in love. My parents approved of her, which seemed to be quite good enough for his own parents. The two navigated their courtship under the watchful eye of my parents. Eventually a wedding date was set and the young lady became a loved member of both families, who burned up the wires planning the wedding. Following the wedding, they departed for Brasil and the last I heard, everyone was happy and there were two little ones added to the family.

But back to the sweater…

When Lorenzo packed up and moved out, he left a fair pile of clothing in the bottom of his closet. One item was a beautiful sweater that he’d managed to cover with ink. I suppose he felt he could afford to discard it without trying to wash the ink out. I adopted the sweater and, with liberal applications of hairspray, cleaned almost all of the ink out. There were a couple of faint spots remaining, but I really liked that sweater. It’s huge and I swim in it, but it’s comfortable and I can liberally layer under it.

I don’t know what kind of wool it is, but it is the softest I’ve ever felt. Not cashmere, as far as I can tell, but exquisitely soft. And thick. And warm.

Obviously, it also wears like iron. The sweater is now...what...maybe 30 years old? And still going strong. It’s my bang around the house sweater. A trusty old friend. Something I enjoy hauling out of the closet every autumn. Because, of course, not only do I love wearing the sweater, it also reminds me of Lorenzo and the wonderful tales of his adjustment to US culture and his place in my parents’ hearts. Not a bad legacy for an old sweater.