Poetry in a Signature

I saw this today in the new Time magazine and realized that our President is also an artist. The lyrical B, the creative use of the line dissecting the O to start the b in Obama.. I am no handwriting expert, but I can recognize a singing line when I see one. My admiration for the man was kicked up another notch. I wonder when he perfected it, while he was a kid, a preteen, growing up in Indonesia, or in Hawaii, when? How many transformations did it go through? Lucky to be a man, and not have to change your signature along with your last name at a rite of passage.

At some time while growing up you realize that your signature is important. You see your dad signing checks, your leave-of-absence notes, your report cards.

You watch him as his pen hovers over paper, his hand trembles before the nib touches it, even though he is in his thirties, and will continue to tremble as he grows older and you grow wiser. You show your brother how you can duplicate your father's signature, flourish for flourish, underline for underline, dot for dot. Not that you ever use this skill, it's just that you have it, and you know it.

You try to develop your own signature, becaue one day you will have to use it, and it had better be good, since it is going to be on everything 'REALLY IMPORTANT'.

So you toil over it: shall I write my full name and my full last name, or my full name and the initial of my last name, or my first initial and my last name, or just my initials, or maybe my nickname? that would be neat, and pretty intriguing

Legend has it that S.H.F.J. Maneckshaw signed his name as Field Marshal, just that. He was the only Field Marshal of the Indian Army at that time, that's why.

Artist M. F. Husain signs his name in different scripts, and I loved that idea. I could read the Gujrati, the Bangla and of course the Devnagari.

Finally you settle for full first name and last name. You practise and perfect it, and distill it down to one you love: the one that starts and ends in one continuous line. The underline and two dots are for flourish and effect: like you father's signature.

You use that for a few years, on "really important" documents including opening your first bank account and signing your first check.

Like the artist you admire, you develop one more for your paintings: one that looks like sticks stacked, mimicking an oriental script.

Before long you are married and have to change it all over again, only this time your last name is really long, so you shorten your signature to two initials and last name. End of story.