The Permanence of Penmanship

In the past, young children not even out of the scribble stage of drawing began to scrawl marks on paper “writing” a letter or note to someone. Although I do not remember when I began doing this, scraps saved by my mother and grandmother attest to the fact that I did, as do the ones I saved when my children did the same. Lauded for his work in defining the stages of artistic development in children, Viktor Lowenfeld recognized that the time when children begin to name their scribbles is an important juncture.

One of my early memories is of my mother reading aloud to me. Because she was an English teacher with six different preparations a day, she often read from one of the high school literature books. I loved the poem The Highwayman with its sounds of the hooves of horses.  One night as I nestled beside her while she read, looking at the picture-less page, I realized that the marks on the page, the words, not only told the story, the letters could also tell her how to make the sounds tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot.  So it probably comes as no surprise that I was enamored with words and writing them from an early age.

I’ve always loved pencils – all kinds of pencils. The way the different kinds feel in your hand, the curl of wood produced when you sharpen them with hand-held sharpeners, the smell of the trimmings. Perhaps the excitement of using those big round pencils in first grade to practice forming lower and upper case letters and numbers on the newsprint pages printed with pale blue guide lines explains why I still collect pencils. In third grade I was eager to learn cursive writing, then frustrated when mine looked nothing like the beautifully formed letters of the green Palmer Penmanship posters that formed a border above the blackboard in Mrs. Byrd’s classroom.

I’ve followed with interest the quandary of whether cursive should be taught in schools any longer. Will it go the way of the dinosaurs in this age of technology when the youth use computers, often reduced to tablet size, rather than books? It might not be long before everyone will text, tweet, or use whatever the new thing is to communicate. If so, what remnants will remain for future generations? Will there be no faded love letters?

What about the handwritten recipes passed from one generation to another?  Many of the things I cook are from family recipes, however making condiments is not high on my agenda. In fact, I’m quite sure that I will never, ever, make Fermented Catsup. Yes, fermented. The recipe even mentions needing to skim off the “white that forms on top.” Pee-ew. Just the thought of the stench of a peck of tomatoes fermenting in my kitchen deters me from trying that recipe. Yet I treasure the small card. It is the only thing I have in my great-grandmother’s handwriting. The card with the recipe was written in 1930, not many years before Eleanor “Ella” Christopher died, so it is the writing of her elder years, yet it retains the distinctive precision characteristic of the Spencerian method. My great-aunt, Stella Christopher, sent the recipe to my mother with this note: “This recipe for fermented catsup is in your Grandmother Christopher’s writing. It (the recipe) came over on the boat from England with your great-great-grandmother, Jessie Oxley Sams.”

            I remember Great-aunt Stella well, and received letters or notes from her many times. Even after all these years, seeing her scrawling script brings immediately to mind her appearance, her voice, her laugh, her floral-scented dusting powder. My great-grandmother died years before I was born, but I wish I could have known her. My grandmother often compared me to her, saying “You’re so much like Mama,” especially when I did something creative. Great-grandmother Ella’s stitcheries brought me comfort at a difficult time in my life –the designs lovely to see, the sayings so apropos, words of comfort and inspiration when I needed them. The stitches in the embroidery were from her hand, but her handwritten recipe in fading ink is even more personal.

Years from now emails and tweets won’t be found tucked in a box of mementos. They might live in the cloud somewhere, but it is unlikely that, even if found, they will bring the same sense of connection of the handwritten note. Penmanship is personal, and it has permanence. The recipe in my Great-grandmother’s hand endures, not because I’ll ever serve the delicacy, but because it reaches across the decades, connecting me with a chain of women. Jessie, Ella, Ida, Stella, and Virginia, you will be remembered. Kept in memory, stories, and fading scraps of paper.

 

 

           

 

 

 

Synchronicity?

 

Within the last six months, events near me have included the reenactment of the Selma to Montgomery March, the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the Capitol of Alabama, and the release of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman.

In March of 1965 I brought some college friends to my house for the weekend, unaware until we arrived that it was the weekend of the Selma to Montgomery March. I remember well the concern that my parents had that perhaps violence would break out, therefore the friends I had brought with me and I were not allowed to leave the house. Although I was within only a few miles of the event, my actual experience of it was, as it was for many, through television and newspaper reports, or through what my father had heard about it at his work.

I do not remember the exact time when the Confederate flag began to fly over the dome of the Capitol in Montgomery, nor do I remember the exact year it was moved from above the dome to the capitol grounds, but I do remember, at least vaguely, the events. It was not possible to convey in a recent conversation with a visitor, someone much younger than myself who had never lived in the south, an understanding of the debates and protests swirling around the flag.

I never had the pleasure of meeting Harper Lee, but my college roommate was from nearby Beatrice, and took me to Monroeville in 1965 or early 1966. During that visit she pointed out the courthouse (where years later I attended the local production of the play, To Kill a Mockingbird) and all the locales that inspired scenes in the book.

Psychiatrist Carl Jung coined the term synchronicity in the 1950s.  I can’t say that I really understand his “acausal connecting principle,” nor have I usually put much store in coincidences. But in my reading, I’ve often been aware that sometimes books seem to land in my hands or work their way to the top of the stack to be read at an uncannily appropriate time.

How does this all tie together?  I’ve been a member of the Alabama Writers’ Conclave for many years, and attended the yearly conference for the last four years. During these gatherings I’ve met many authors, heard them speak, and/or bought their books.

Sometimes these books have become lost, or at least misplaced, in the many areas where books end up in my house. Knowing that I would see Chervis Isom at this year’s conference, I was relieved when his book, The Newspaper Boy, resurfaced in time for me to read it before I saw him. He grew up in Birmingham during the civil rights era, and bravely details in this memoir the development and changes in his own attitudes over the years. I finished reading the book on Tuesday, July 14, the same day that Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman was released. I began reading it the next day. To read the two books back to back was a very interesting juxtaposition.

Also attending and speaking at the conference were Sena Jeter Naslund, author of Four Spirits, a historical novel about the 1963 bombing at a church in Birmingham that killed four young girls and T. K. Thorne, author of Last Chance for Justice: How Relentless Investigators Uncovered New Evidence Convicting the Birmingham Church Bombers. Since the conference was planned well in advance, it was perhaps a bit of synchronicity that the speakers were lined up months before the events I mentioned at the beginning of this post.

Reviews, both good and bad, of Go Set a Watchman have appeared in almost every newspaper and flooded the internet, and I am not trying to add to that number. Someone recently said, “You can’t hold time in a bottle.” Certainly, there are times I would not want to hold, but I am thankful that there are those writers who can hold it in a book.  Their stories, perhaps better than anything else, can help others understand the past and move forward in the present.

           

             

 

 

Happy Birthday to Me!

It was a great day, and more fun when I visited with friends in the evening. So I’m not really having to proclaim “Happy Birthday” to myself out of loneliness – I received cards, calls, texts, e-mails, and numerous messages or timeline postings on Facebook. I have definitely not been neglected.

I have never tried to conceal my actual age (well, not once I was twenty-one, anyway.) A friend of mine says “A woman that will tell her age will tell anything,” as though it’s a bad thing. I’m to the stage when I’m glad to have made it this far. But having said all that, I was a little put off when I opened Facebook the day before my birthday and there it was “Carol Robbins Hull turning 72 tomorrow.” Somehow in cold hard type it seemed, well, I’m not sure what it seemed. Intrusive, maybe. If I choose to tell you my age, that is one thing, but for Facebook to blab it to the whole FB universe seemed a bit heartless. Of course, it probably means only that I didn’t do the settings right and their computer just spit it out to alert people that my day was coming up, and I will admit that I loved reading all the posts that people send me on my day.

I’m not quite through complaining though. In past years I’ve received birthday cards from my insurance agent and sometimes the dentist, and that was fine with me, a bit commercial, but at least I actually have some kind of relationship with them. However I received one this year that offends me. It says that I have something special just for me: a hearing test and a gift card to a restaurant when I order my hearing aids. I guess what my cousin’s husband says is true, that once we get to a certain age we are presumed to be “deaf, blind, and lame.” I am tired of being bombarded weekly with ads for those things you ride around on, hearing aids, and old-folks-friendly phones. I can still hear pretty much all I want to hear. True, I do have to ask people to repeat things sometimes, but that is usually because I wasn’t paying attention in the first place. After cataract surgery my vision is the best it’s been since I was ten years old. And I may not keep up an athlete’s pace, but I’m still getting around pretty well. Not running any marathons, actually not running at all, but then I rarely did even when younger. My mother thought that ladies shouldn’t perspire, much less sweat (a word she never used) and I’m somewhat in agreement.

There are at least a few establishments that I refuse to do business with because I really dislike their ads. Because I am getting older (I refuse to say old) it is possible that I might someday need a hearing aid, but if one more sales piece thinly disguised as a good wish arrives, this place will most certainly find itself on that list. So all you companies that bombard women ‘of a certain age,’ with unwanted reminders that we are not twenty-one any more, take note. I think I speak for most of us when I say, “Stop it!” Outwardly we may appear as youthful as we feel, but don’t count us out yet. We still know our own minds, and we are a choosy lot.