Making Paper Beautiful

A prompt from The Brain is a Noodle

Lines perfectly spaced, Ready for elementary eyes To view, and pursue, The exact images They saw on the chalkboard.

In my mind’s eye, I see them, Those letters so beautifully crafted, Capitals and lower-case, My goal for that day To copy them perfectly.

But somehow my mind and my hand Don’t seem to connect. My hands and that pencil Were as much at odds, As a scratched record on the player.

Later I would understand Words like dyslexia and attention-deficit Were to blame For the mishmash of letters And paper torn by erasers.

A failure at six, and seven, and eight As my report card showed Handwriting with a “C” attached. The distress accompanied me Until age now.

I wish I could tell that little girl That her effort was beautiful And replace the tears with smiles And the self-flagellation with understanding. She wasn’t created to be perfect.

I’d let her know One day she will become a writer. Oh, never known for her good penmanship, But sometimes for Her words and thoughts.

Some day She will know Perfection should never be her goal And yet even someone like her Can make paper beautiful.

Paper has brought me so much joy in my life. When I was younger, it was usually the item I would buy at Eagle’s Five & Dime with the quarter I was given. I had a special love for receipt books. Two copies and carbon paper? The possibilities were endless. I still love to browse in a stationery store.

But yes, penmanship was never my forte’. I cried many tears of frustration and it was one area in which I always felt as though I was a failure. The adults in my early life were kind but told me time and again I needed to slow down and practice. I slowed down and practiced every night, in agony, and never could seem to conquer it. Paper was the evidence of my failure.

But paper also made books. No object was better than that or brought me more joy.

I guess if I were to status the relationship between paper and me, “It’s Complicated”. But we’re working on it.

Thanks to Lucy Dan 蛋小姐 (she/her/她) for her lovely way of getting me to write. ❣️ How did the invention of paper affect you? Here’s her response. Join us and write your own.

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