Still by hand

I still answer letters by hand. I mention it because a few people have asked, since I left the studio, whether I'd stopped, now that I have less time and a desk that's also a company. I haven't. Every letter gets an answer, in ink, on paper, in an envelope with a stamp, mostly on Sunday afternoons at my kitchen table, which is where I am now with a stack of five.

My mother's rules still hold. Answer within the week, or explain why without making a meal of it. Write the date out in full. Answer what they asked before telling them what you wanted to say. Never type a letter you could write, because the other person can tell, and it tells them something about how much you minded.

I see her handwriting less than I used to, because I see her. For ten years it came to me every week on blue paper. Now it's notes on her fridge, a grocery list, the inside of a birthday card. But last month she sent me a card through the mail, across town, for no reason at all, and that's how I noticed.

Her writing has changed. It's larger than it was. The loops on her l's and h's have gone a little uncertain, and the lines run uphill toward the right edge of the card as if they're climbing out of the lake. She's sixty-nine. Her hands hurt in the mornings, which she mentions only the way she mentions the weather.

All my life her handwriting was the steadiest thing about her. It was the hand on the overdue slips, the hand in the margins of my homework, the hand that taught me cursive at the kitchen table with a pencil she'd sharpened with a knife. I'm not alarmed. It's still her. But I've started keeping things I used to throw away: the grocery lists, the notes on the fridge, a sticky note on my car that said "TIRES." I couldn't tell you what I'm keeping them for.

Whose handwriting would you know anywhere?