Give the Gift of Touch, by Barbara Cartwright

As a child, I believed my future self was hiding in my hand. I’d pore over other people’s writing, looking for who I might be in backward slants and forward scrawls, in carefully printed letters and in decorative script. In the flourishing tails of g’s and j’s and p’s and ‘y’s. And in the ever so exotic epsilon e. Now that, I thought, was truly me. Though I couldn’t make a whole self out of just one letter. And where exactly was the future me in all the rest?

Do we have a choice in how we’ll write? Or even who we’ll be? Or are we born with our hands already knowing how they’ll write, with a history of our ancestor’s script residing in our loops and lines, like a parallel DNA? Sometimes I’ll look at my writing and say: My capital G is just like my Dad’s. And that zippy bit of pen and ink where you have to guess the word from the company it keeps, that’s so like Grandpa Bill.

I cannot see my mother in my hand. I have tried too hard too long not to be like her to let her into what I write. And her letters were — let us just say they were dramatic and unique, just like she was. Her i’s wore wide open circles over top, and her t’s had protracted crossbars, extending left to right.

Still, I look longingly at her hand each time I read a recipe she’s written out. Strange how out of mere ingredients like flour and salt, Tbsps and 1/4 cups, a person can come to life, so real, it would take nothing to reach over and give the gift of touch.