Handwriting

In the handwriting of a 4-year-old we see a glimpse of what once was.

The letters are methodically pieced together in all caps, clumsily yet deliberately, with the simplicity of heiroglyphics. A fluid hand stroke is an inevitable future, but not just yet.

For now, the hands that spell the divine are still gravitating into the order we create for them. Lines forming letters; letters forming words; words explaining ideas; ideas bound by the words we use to describe the indescribable.

So often we forget what they know intrinsically: It's the ideas that come before the futile efforts to explain them.

**

Mornings during the work week, my son arrives at pre-school in a perpetual state of fashionably lateness.

Every morning, without fail, she's there. Little blue eyes, little smile. She hears the commotion at the door and runs toward it. Payton is the first person Asa sees every morning before he enters class.

"There's Asaaaaaa! Asa's heeeeere!"

Through her grin is always a look of concern over whatever he might have on his mind that particular morning. He doesn't care much what's on her mind -- nor, for that matter, does he know if he should care what's on his own.

She cares enough each and every morning to say hello and describe to him whatever picture she has drawn or song she has learned.

One morning, the teacher explains, all the little girls gathered at the door arguing over who would get to marry Asa when he showed up. Only one, though, is consistently there.

**

This will melt away.

Years will pass and the lines will smooth as hands become more sophisticated and the words take over.

Further down the path of lives running parallel for a time and then diverging, they will, perhaps, happen upon a little Strawberry Shortcake Valentine's card with the purposefully and lucidly scrawled "To: Asa," "From: Payton."

Perhaps she will look and wonder what boy it was who had such a strange name to write. Perhaps he will look and tell his wife of the little girl he now figures had a crush on him.

We will never know, for the path isn't as conspicuous as the paths taken by the hand of a 4-year-old to form letters.

What we know at the moment is this: Here is a still capture of life's relentless progression. This is the smoking gun of togetherness. Two small people at the same stage of life sharing the challenges of learning an order they don't yet understand.

It takes root, one letter at a time, before the words grab hold and wring out the uncontrollabe desire to dash to the classroom door.