Make It Legible

Last week a "room redesigner," Julie Tomlin of Raleigh/Cary, spent three and a half hours in my office and when I returned in early afternoon, the place had been transformed.

She didn't add anything or take anything away. Instead, she shuffled and restacked and consolidated, and now it seems as if the room has come into focus. And I feel as clearly located and defined as if I were sitting on top of a float in a parade.

A doctor I know has the clearest handwriting I've ever seen. It's like an architect's printing. He said he made it that way on purpose. It was a way to say: here I am, here's what I'm prescribing, and I stand by it.

I don't think doctors' reputedly messy handwritings are by design a way to hide. But it has crossed my mind before that my own might be a form of privacy. Nobody's every going to be prying into my bits and pieces of handwritten journal. It wouldn't be worth the effort to decipher.

All of which is to say that: making things clean and clear is a way of declaring one's self. Of standing by who and what we are.