Handwritten lines

If you still think that computers can write for you now, and there is no need to write neatly by hand, then you probably don't need to read this article.
I make a living as a “keyboarder” (as my friends call writers) – I understand the value of a keyboard, but I never get tired of occasionally seeing the handwritten words that I have preserved.
The thing I can keep the longest for myself is the old photo of father and daughter from 1984.
At that time, I was over 1 year old. My father scribbled a few words on it and signed his name very stylized. My father had a habit of signing his signature carefully. He never called me “daughter” except for a few lines after a picture or a few books he later bought for me. To me, those two words were very sweet. Every time I saw my father’s words - “for my daughter” - it was enough to make my heart tremble with warmth. The feeling of turning a page of a book with such short, warm dedications, to me, was a joy. The joy sometimes came from a trip to sell scrap with my mother, seeing a book of Lenin’s stories. Inside was a dedication to my son Pham Hong Linh, in the fall of 1989.

I haven’t read that book for decades, but somehow I still keep it. Sometimes I think, if I meet Pham Hong Linh, I will not hesitate and feel very happy to give him this memento from the past. Surely, he will be very happy. One time, I proactively searched for that name on Facebook, carefully typing in the region Vinh, Ha Tinh, Nghe An – the place where I lived when I was a child, where the book was lost. That book has been on my bookshelf for many years, not given to anyone – although I have a habit of giving books that I no longer read to people who need to read them to increase the value of the book.
I love reading books and keep them very carefully. I wrap them carefully and never
The story of marking the book with a pen or folding the page to mark where I read. I don't want to be an eyesore next time I read or for others to be annoyed when they encounter a page that is different from the others. But I always like to write something on the first page of the books I love and know that it will be kept on my bookshelf for a long time. Like yesterday, I wrote in the book Six People Traveling Around the World, marking the first day I took my daughter to piano lessons. That I hope she will have a lot of passion to persevere on the path she has chosen.
I'm not the only one with this habit, my girlfriend is even more "skilled" at it.
She wrote very thoughtful lines for her child in the book she loved the most when she had no boyfriend. Her little boy will be in first grade next year and is starting to learn to spell. Surely when he sees those lines, he will be very excited and surprised to know that his mother thought of him when he was just dust somewhere in this world.
* * * * *
My mother works as a statistician, she likes to write down what she likes. I don't know if it's because of her meticulous nature. When watching TV or Chinese or Korean dramas, there are often poems at the back or beginning of the film. Poems about the hunchback prime minister, about my love Yumi. My mother often likes those poems, copies them into a notebook I studied in the previous year that still has a lot of paper left behind. Or sometimes, conveniently, writes them right on the calendar she just tore off the wall. My mother doesn't have the habit of reading books like me. She also doesn't know when there will be very good poems like Onga Bergon's and Tagor's poems that I often copy into my poetry notebook. Between my mother and I are two seemingly different worlds but there are still small, cute connections like that hobby of copying poems.
And one day, after a few years of my mother's passing, I was sorting through my old bookshelves, opening the books before giving them to my friend's class, and I came across a calendar my mother had kept for years, when she was still alive. Her slanted handwriting was copied from somewhere (probably from a newspaper page):
Live without anger, without resentment, without blame
Live with a smile in the face of thorny challenges
Live to keep up with the morning light
Live in peace with everyone.

Life is moving but the heart is always still
Life is love but the heart is not attached

Live happily, always despise fame and fortune
The mind remains unchanged in the midst of the ever-changing world.
I imagined my mother sitting gaunt, her gray hair flying, resting the calendar on the newspaper on her feet, wearing glasses and writing neatly in straight lines. I had seen those familiar verses in her stylized calligraphy before, but only when I saw my mother's simple handwriting did I burst into tears.
That calendar page, the other side of course is the day my mother was still alive. I kept it somewhere very carefully to
avoid being seen by the naughty son and possibly brought out to… stack the boat. Carefully
I can't remember where I put it now. But actually, when I close my eyes, I can immediately picture my mother's handwriting and those words.
* * * * *
And sometimes in the middle of frantic days of meeting deadlines, I try to type on the computer for real
To finish a manuscript quickly, I still have the habit of burning some essential oils, turning on some music, and writing something neatly on a page of a book, a notebook, or even a family expense book if I suddenly want to write something but don’t want to get a new notebook. When I handwrite poems or songs that I just thought of, I always have the inertia to try to write as beautifully as possible, and especially have a feeling that my mind is relaxed and spacious, even though handwriting is always slower than typing on a computer.
You may wonder, what is the point of writing that?
Copy down a poem, a song, or a light, passing thought, a short rambling about something, without any specific purpose. Just vaguely knowing that there are things that will never be different from the past. When I was 17, 18, my hands were still full, my fingers were still slender, my handwriting was still quite beautiful. Now my hands are stiffer, my handwriting is worse, but the sweetness is still there when I slowly copy down what I love.
There are many ways for us to keep the sweetness in our lives.
To me, simply handwritten words can do that seemingly impossible thing.