Penmanship was once a status symbol—
the nicer the hand, the greater one’s
education, wealth, privilege.
And neat cursive handwriting became
what every teacher demanded of pupils—
the feminine slant or the upright masculine—
prompting the torment of many a student,
including my left-handed father, whose
own father went to the right-leaning
teacher and told her to leave his son alone.
He was just fine as a leftie, a defining moment
my father talked about all his life.
So, too, then, my sister was left to her
southpaw inclinations, though she, like
our father, is ambidextrous in many things.
And my mother and I, the right-handers,
suffered no illusions about how our
words looked on the page, nothing
fancy but mostly legible. Until a certain
point when penmanship starts to
decline along with the rest of us,
and we look around, bemoaning the
disappearance of cursive handwriting
being taught to younger folks,
who often can’t read our scrawls.
Whether that’s a lack of familiarity or
our own indecipherable chicken scratch
is up for debate. What matters, I tell
those who sit around tables with me
applying pen to paper, is that they
can, should they want to, read it aloud
so that we can marvel at what’s
been transmitted from gray matter
through the web of neurons to muscles
and joints and fingers, the miracle
of words coming through one intent
on capturing them, preserving
what they didn’t know they had to say,
delivered through the miracle
of sleight of hand.
Güd wrtr 
Loved where you took this.
Thankful greetings this festive time of year.
M
Martha K.S. Patrick Gümüşlük, Muğla, Turkiye
*Gönülden gönüle yol** vardır. *Turkish Proverb From one heart to another there is a path.
Thank you, Martha!
I’ve seen your cursive displayed behind you on blackboards or whiteboards in several of your posts over the last few years. It is unique and beautiful and has changed little that I can discern since I first saw it in 1972. Age has certainly not diminished its graceful flow.
When my youngest son was a year and a half, he started picking up pencils and crayons and began creating little images on paper and attempting to copy letters. We all noticed he used whatever random hand was closest to his drawing implements and it made us wonder if he might be ambidextrous.
I was sitting with him at the kitchen table one day, watching him construct a picture, tongue poking out one side of his mouth in serious little-boy concentration. He was using his right hand, so, in the spirit of experimentation, I asked him, “Son, can you use your other hand to draw?” He looked up at me, a bit puzzled, yet with a sidelong glance clearly conveying that Dad was an idiot. He hesitated a moment, then shrugged his shoulders, seemed to accept the challenge, and grabbed his pencil with BOTH hands–then awkwardly continued his work.
You have to be very specific with children.
Love this, Terry! And thank you for your kind comments on my handwriting,too.