Write!

How is your handwriting these days? Mine has really deteriorated, like any other skill that is seldom used. I didn't even know there was a day set aside as "handwriting day" -- sounds like a marketing ploy -- but, as I wrote recently, I've just ordered some new inks and a new fountain pen. I got my ink today, so it felt like the right time to write a bit, and think about handwriting.

My "normal" handwriting is the fast, right-leaning scrawl you see above. It's embarrassing to me to look at letters written by my mother, my grandmother and her sisters, or my great-grandmother, all of whom had beautiful penmanship, and -- I'm afraid -- more patience than I do when writing a letter or a journal entry. Here's the beginning of one from my grandmother, where she excuses her poor penmanship -- as if! -- because she's writing on her lap.

I miss those letters and those correspondences: the anticipation, the thoughtfulness of composing a reply, the slowness of the exchange. I miss finding a real letter in my mailbox in college, or from a faraway boyfriend or close friend. Here's an envelope from my grandmother, addressed to me in Vermont in 1983. Gosh.

It's so beautiful!

I actually made my living for a while as a calligrapher. Those pages of carefully-formed calligraphic scripts don't resemble my handwriting, and they represent a lot of slowing down and patience and slow breathing. For me, handwriting like the examples above is more like talking, and it moves a lot faster. But when I look at the way I write now, i'm shocked. It feels to me like it's time to do some of those breathing exercises, slow down, and write somebody -- maybe myself! -- a letter.

Not that what we write now, by email or even by text, is any less sincere or thoughtful. I still carry on long correspondences with a number of people, and we don't have the patience or the time to do it by snail mail: those days, I'm quite sure, are long gone. But our brains are connected to our hands, and writing is part of what makes us human. We lose those manual dexterity skills at our peril, I think, and I bet that one day scientists will discover that the near-overnight loss of writing by hand, and related skills, affected our brains in some significant ways. I know some of you keep handwritten journals, or write "morning pages" each day. Others draw or sketch. But the time most of us now spend with a pencil or pen in hand is really minimal - for some of us, it barely exists anymore. Do you think it's important? Do you miss it? What takes its place in your life these days?