My dad’s handwriting. Sometimes it’s like silk, with his perfect precise proportionate pencil strokes, and sometimes it’s a woven macrame, the thick and rough calligraphy. My mom’s handwriting isn’t easily understood. It’s packed with information when she’s writing in her gold work notebook. But when she’s writing on her cream colored paper, it is a pink cloud, not a stroke of anger or stress. I write very fast. I’m rushing myself and I’m excited to write what’s next. My grandma has books and books of recipes that have been passed down from generation to generation, with the worn paper cover and the pages crinkly but packed with tidbits and techniques. 

My grandpa writes only in Arabic. His handwriting is deep and knowledgeable and it just flows onto his journal. His handwriting is “why” and it’s “how” and it can tell you about anything and everything. His mind is like a clock, tick, tock, tick, tock, thinking with gears and screws and springs. His handwriting can explain caves and phones, hunting and texting, souls and bones, inside and outside and new and old. He can answer questions you wouldn’t have thought of. His writing is like an encyclopedia, but with more answers. He was an architect back in his time, and if he wasn’t writing in his brown notebook with cream pages he was sketching and designing and explaining why this works and this doesn’t. He designs with a stable structure and foundation, or else everything will get lost and fall apart. It will have nothing holding it up, nothing supporting it, no base, no safety, no grandfather. His handwriting would teach you about strawberries and flip flops and your mind and your habits and your mistakes and your successes. It is not light. It is not rough. It is a rich dark chocolate ganache. Smooth. Sweet. Bitter. Strong.