My Mother's Penmanship Lessons

In her last notes, when her hand began to tremble, my mother tried to teach it the penmanship she was known for, how to make the slanted stems of the p's and d's, the descending roundness of the capital m's, the long loops of the f's crossed at the center, sending it back again and again until each message was the same: a record of her insistence that the hand return her to the way she was before, and of all the ways the hand had disobeyed.