Writing at 5 Years Old

My right hand has been hurting a lot, so I think I’m gonna start writing with my left hand… not bad.

If writing with my left hand comes easier now than it did before, does that mean my brain capacity has grown? Two years ago I couldn’t write this fast. I couldn’t even hold a pen properly with my left hand.

But writing this way reminds me of my grandfather.

When I was little, I would watch him clasp his fingers around a pen, just like how I’m doing now, concentrating on every stroke he made deliberately.

It’s quite difficult.

I was always surprised to see him, a grown man, struggle. All adults — it seemed to me, as a little kid — knew how to write, so why didn’t he?

But there I sat, watching him and my love would grow. Sweet grandfather — an admirable man who worked so hard and deserved so much more in the world.

It is only now that I realize how much privilege I am bestowed — writing with my left hand. Believing since I was a little girl, that all adults must know how to write. As if it were an inherent human right and not a skill we picked up from practice the moment we turned 5 years old.

As if any person who looked old should naturally be able to write. And if they couldn’t, it would be a judge of their character or intelligence. Like writing scribbles with my left hand now is not enough to show how easy it is to be 5 years-old again at 27 — and just as easily, therefore, at 47 — my grandfather, the person I loved most.

I pitied you. Because you wrote like me.

Now I see that it wasn’t you who was not enough, but I, for ever thinking that the ability to write could make a person smarter than any other, or more.

This makes me sad for a generation of girls and boys who’ve lost themselves in moments like this. In moments where self-hate sleeps and shame is born.

How did your children feel when they saw you struggle to do things others could? How could you console them if you could not even console yourself? Would they listen if their respect had already gone? How could you ever be able to say that their teacher can write because she has been writing since she was 5 years old? But you only started 10 years ago, when you joined the army to make note of where bombs fell?

It’s in the little things like this that I realize how easy it is to forget that people learn. Education is a privilege and something we take for granted the moment we start writing at the age of 5 years-old.