Smiley Face

When writing a note to a family member or friend or leaving a reminder note to Larry, I quite often will sign my name and place a little smiley face next to it -- two dots for eyes and a smile but no circle around it.  It's rather a silly thing, but it makes me smile doing it and I hope it makes the reader smile, too.  Recently, while going through some items in our archives at work for the commemorative book I'm writing, I ran across a note that my mom had written to one of my former colleagues and there, next to her name, was the same type of smiley face.  I hadn't remembered my mom doing that very often, so it caught me by surprise.  As I looked at it, I felt as if she was smiling at me, perhaps happy that I'm taking such a keen interest in the history of the organization she had loved as her employer for so many years and that now I love as my employer, too.  So, as silly as it may be, I'll keep making those little smiley faces next to my name.  Perhaps it'll bring an unexpected happiness to someone else's day, just as much as seeing the one Mom had written some 15 years ago did for me today.

Pen in Hand

My good friend Kitty told me about a letter she discovered from an ancestor and what amazing penmanship he had.  Her story made me think of a letter my late mom had received from her paternal grandfather when she was a small girl. She still had it among her keepsakes at the time of her passing.  Great-grandfather's handwriting was beautiful, too.  At one time, handwriting was so important, but today it is being quickly relegated to those "things we used to do," due to the advent of the keyboard.  I greatly admire the handwriting of my friends Donna and Julie.  As I have watched them write, their pens glide across the paper and what is left behind is consistently legible, artistic, creative and beautiful.  I, on the other hand, have handwriting that changes with the years and my moods.  I've written slanted backward and slanted forward, straight up and down, large and loopy, small and tense, strictly cursive and other times nearly printing.  Despite the convenience of email and texting, I love to receive and send hand-written notes.  So long as my handwriting remains legible and there's still notepaper to write on, I'll keep committing pen to paper.  And maybe, just maybe, someday through much practice, my handwriting will become as lovely as Donna and Julie's (but don't count on it!).