Can you picture in your mind the handwriting of someone close to you?
I can see my dad’s tiny angular script for lists and labeling. I can see my mom’s crisp, legible rounded letters almost connected like cursive (very much like her organized self). I can see my husband’s almost-shorthand with quick letters that make sense to him because he has to take so many notes for work and classes. I can see my own teacher-informed style written on whiteboards and handmade cards with equal parts legibility and could-be-a-font.
I started down this line of thinking because of a piece of paper my youngest daughter brought home form her Kindergarten co-op. I saw her name written at the top by her teacher, who by God’s eternal goodness, happens to be one of my college roommates. Seeing her script at the top of the paper was sort of like the cherry on top as I was already excited about her knowing my daughter as a learner in the classroom.
My roommate was an incredible elementary education major and hearing about all the passion, fun, and child-centered respect she brings to the kids in her class each week reminded me of all the notes we passed back in forth in education classes before the days of cheap personal laptops and WiFi being strong enough to carry the load. I still have shoeboxes of notes and memorabilia in my closet from each year of college, filled with the handwriting of all my friends from those 4 years.
Perhaps what I am encouraging all of us to do is to welcome being surprised by the little joys in life, like handwriting. When the people we love are no more we will hang on to many memories of how their life intersected with ours and one of the most unsuspecting things is through something that is uniquely them — their words scrawled on a piece of paper.
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