After the wonderful illustrations and poems from Mother Stork’s Baby Book, the last thing I fell in love with was personal. I had never seen my great-grandmother’s handwriting before and I was smitten at once. At the time it was probably nothing fancy, but now it is such a dying art I always appreciate a pretty cursive. It is hard to imagine her as a young mother in New York in the early 1900s, sitting and writing with ink and a dip pen. Finding time to fill out a baby book isn’t easy, but how much longer did it take without our modern implements? The unevenness of the flow is charming and seeing a page filled with her writing is quite pleasing to my eyes.
I am a big fan of lovely cursive penmanship. My mom always writes in a small and tidy cursive (and she does short-hand, which is nuts) which is what I was taught in school. I remember getting older and then your handwriting was your identity. I still remember wishing that could write like Francis Rennolds and Jenny Fry, they had a perfect bubble-style script, which was all the rage in 7th grade in the early 1980s. My attempts at super-cool cursive never really worked out, but I have always noticed handwriting, it is quite telling. At some point my grandma learned about what your handwriting means about your personality and she told me that I was creative. I must have been in my early teens, but I thought that was a beacon of hope for my future.
Imagine my amazement when the invitation to my first Bat Mitzvah arrived in 7th grade. I was blown away! A purple envelope with purple writing. Here it is:
(Yes, as I was writing this I ran to the basement and got this out of my scrapbook. I saved all of the Bar and Bat Mitzvah invitations I received because they were all so pretty and fancy. Now do you understand how much we save in my family and why Mother Stork’s Baby Book was found in a big box of papers?)
As an adult I took a calligraphy class at Paper Source in Chicago, but I couldn’t master the beautiful swishes needed. So, I stuck with my hodge-podge mixture of printing and script. I enjoy a fabulous pen and dabbled with fountain pens in college (back in the old days when we took notes on paper!). I also enjoy addressing holiday cards more than most people.
It is fun to see my kindergartener learning to write his letters in D’Nealian, there is some hope for cursive after all!
Here are more examples of Granny Kistner’s penmanship:
Next up…
CHAPTER 5, THE PRESENTATION OF MOTHER STORK’S BABY BOOK