Lopez 1

Maria Lopez
Professor Blandford
UWRIT 1103
9 September 2015
Writing Left-Handed
When I was five years old, my mother gave me a carved wooden box with a slide-off
panel top. She painted a picture of a pink-and-blue butterfly and wrote my name in large, bold
letters on the front: MARIA. I traced the letters over and over with the tip of my index finger,
memorizing the curves and lines of the familiar-yet-strange shapes. Eventually, I graduated onto
repeatedly copying the characters, trying the word out with the clumsy flick of a felt-tipped
marker. I liked the sense of ownership I felt when I wrote down my name. My name belonged to
me. I proceeded to write it down on everything I owned. I claimed the ceiling above my top bunk
with a series of tiny, uneven Marias. I scrawled a huge Maria in permanent marker on the
back of my dollhouse. I marked every page of Goodnight, Moon with a Maria. I liked the hump
in the M and the rounded top of the R, but my favorite was the sharp point of the A. For
months, my name was the only word I cared to write.
What I did not know was that I was writing it incorrectly. My source of reference, the
coveted wooden box that was now (as I recall) stuffed with Pokmon cards and interestingly
shaped rocks, had deceived me. My mother was, and still is, severely dyslexic. Her crowning
achievement in this manner is spelling my sisters name three different ways on three different
official documents: on her birth certificate, she is Emelene; on her social security card, she is
Emmeline; and on her passport, she is Emeline. In typical fashion, she had spelled my name on
the box with the letter R backwards: MAIA. I had traced and copied and studied that

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backwards R; I had scarred the wrong pattern into my brain. Thankfully, in first grade, at least
in the beginning, it does not particularly matter to what extent you can write your name. I was
one of many children who wrote letters backwards or upside down, or too big, or too crooked.
Sister Annunciata paid no particular mind to my idiosyncrasy, but she did take notice when I
stopped writing with my dominant right hand.
My mother is left-handed, and I wanted to be exactly like her, or as close to her as I could
possibly be. Something about being right-handed when she was left-handed felt inherently wrong
and, when I noticed the difference, I began to make a conscious effort to write with my nondominant hand. Once again, I set to meticulously practicing the wrong thing. My already
illegible six-year-old writing became catastrophically incomprehensible. My Marias were
alternately too cramped and slanted, or too looming and spaced out, the letters disjointed and
contorted. Writing with my left hand felt jarring, but I adamantly practiced for reasons I can no
longer understand. My mother was left-handed, my sister was left-handed and, in my six-yearold brain, it was of the utmost importance that I, too, become left-handed.
It was strange how small and semi-neatly I could write with my right hand, in comparison
to my left. I would hold my right hand behind my back while I painstakingly scribbled with my
awkward left. Improvements were frustratingly gradual, but I did not become truly discouraged
until after Sister Annunciata, my first grade teacher, pulled me aside and asked me why my
handwriting had severely regressed since the beginning of the school year. When I explained that
I was trying to become left-handed, she laughed as though I had just let her in on a joke.
Shouldnt you figure out how to write with your right hand first? she asked.
Not if I dont want to, I asserted.

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Youre making things harder on yourself, she warned, but I did not listen. I continued
to practice, only now there were negative repercussions. You can do better, Sister Annunciata
encouraged in the skewed margin of my workbook beside a hand-drawn frowny face. Use your
other hand, she suggested in green pen on a dismal spelling quiz. I cant read this, she
repeated like a mantra, dramatically squinting and holding the paper a foot away from her face,
turning it sideways as though that would unlock some hidden secret. One bleary morning, she
politely called on me to copy vocabulary words onto the whiteboard and watched in bemused
silence while I struggled to hold the marker, repeatedly dropping it onto the floor. I became
uncomfortably aware of my looping, jagged letters. I resented Sister Annunciata for calling me to
the board to write in front of my classmates. She was trying to embarrass me on purpose, I
reasoned. Publically shaming me into switching hands seemed like an uncharacteristically evil
thing for a nun to do.
I retaliated for a few more days, stubbornly continuing my doomed trend of exclusively
writing with my left-hand. I felt a certain glee in the way my name looked almost like
hieroglyphs on the dotted first line of all my quizzes and assignments. Doubtlessly, I would have
continued to torment Sister Annunciata with my illegible handwriting for some time longer if my
mother had not gone through my backpack and recovered my rather disappointing homework
folder. While she shuffled through the various papers that she had to sign, she frowned.
Whats going on? she asked. This isnt like you.
I want to be like you, I insisted to raised brows.
Carefully, she studied the page in front of her. Look, she pointed with a black
fingernail, Youve even written your name wrong.
I havent.

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The R is backwards. See? She glanced around for a moment before grabbing a
peppershaker and adamantly thrusting it into my face. Look at the last letter. What direction is it
facing? The R at the end of the word pepper did indeed face right, as opposed to left, the way I
always drew it. The way she always drew it, too.
Thats how you do it.
But were different people, and besides, you have to get real good at spelling, like your
dad, she laughed, So that I can ask you how to spell things.
It was dispiriting when I switched to my dominant hand and realized that my handwriting
was still out of practice, but I found that it was much easier to rapidly improve with my right
hand and, over the course of a few weeks, I gradually progressed. Sister Annunciata noticed
almost immediately. Much better, she cooed with encouragement as she jingled up and down
the classroom aisle, her long, beaded rosary chiming with each step that she took. Doesnt that
feel natural? It did feel more natural. It felt more like me, and it was much easier to focus on
comprehending the material, now that all my attention was not concentrated on the tedious task
of forcing my willful left hand to cooperate. My grades began to improve and I found myself
more engaged in my schoolwork. My name became progressively more decipherable. I was no
longer terrified of being called to write on the whiteboard.
Perhaps it isnt some great revelation that the way I process information, the way my
mind works, is different from my mother, but at six years old, it felt like a personal epiphany. I
realized that I had been putting all of my energy and effort into a fruitless endeavor. I owned my
literacy. There was no need to replicate my mothers difficulties and triumphs, because we were
inherently different and I would have my own tribulations and successes. I also liked the idea of
improving my spelling and literacy to help her. I wanted to know things for her benefit. I wanted

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to be able to answer every question that she asked. Wanting to help her, and wanting to feel
useful, was a great motivating tool as I worked on improving my literacy. If Sister Annunciata
was a literary sponsor, then perhaps my mother was both a literacy and illiteracy sponsor. First
she inspired bad habits in me, and then she encouraged the opposite.
Several times a month, my mother still texts or calls me, asking me about spelling. How
do U spell efert? she texts. E-F-F-O-R-T, I respond. How many Us are in conspicuous?
she asks while she composes a message over lunch. Two, I say simultaneously alongside my
twelve-year-old sister. I proofread her emails and circle backwards Rs in her letters. I think
about the backwards R of hers that I traced over and over on the wooden box she gave me for
my birthday. I know now that literacy is personal. Discovering my own literacy has been a slow
process of revelation that started as I began to read, and has continued to develop as Ive reached
adulthood. As a child, I personally felt very motivated by the thought of being able to help my
mom with one or two things that she struggles with. As I grew older, I found that it was easier to
read and write about things that interested me. It could take me an indefinite amount of time to
struggle through a dull reading assignment, while a book that excited me was finished in a
manner of days. Because of my personal experiences, I believe that learning to claim your own
literacy is a process of finding the right motivation and discovering how to best personally
express yourself.