Roses for my worries – Diary of an ambidextrous

Robert pushed on through the crowd of victory celebrators. The corner of the market place was oddly deserted. A small corner of quite in the noisy square. He laid the huge bunch of red roses at the stone feet and looked up the silent figure of the Maid. “See Jehane.., I Remember the Roses.”

– an excerpt from Remember The Roses by Avery Taylor

The year was 2023… In an attempt to make the last few weeks of a rather uneventful year memorable, I amused myself with the challenge of becoming an ambidextrous. Now I may not have the best penmanship and I may be extremely under blessed in the art of drawing, but there’s one thing that’s been my constant – my ability to be constant, at least for a substantial period of time.

So filled with the sheer audacity of living up to my goal of becoming a jack of all trades, I started practicing writing with my non dominant hand. Soon days became weeks and weeks became many weeks. I eventually practised for close to 300 days, and then gave up, abruptly. They say animals have seasons while human beings have reasons. My reason to stop was that I had no reason to continue. What was I supposed to do with this skill of being able to write rather slowly with my non dominant hand? Write a novel?

And so, days and weeks and months passed by. Every now and then I’d hold a pen in my non dominant hand and try to doodle or write something, just to see how long it would take for me to unlearn a skill I had learnt with so much effort. Sometimes I tried cursive, sometimes block letters, and very rarely I’d try to draw. As I have mentioned before, I am not blessed with the grace of being able to draw even with my dominant hand, so drawing with my non dominant hand was still a failing feat, but at least the expectations were non existent. One afternoon, I remember picking up a pen and doodling mindlessly on a newspaper. I drew sun, moon, stars and then… i drew a rose…

I stared at that perfect looking rose doodle in disbelief. It must have been a one off thing, I thought. So I drew another rose, and another, and another till I had no space left to doodle any more roses. What is more, the whole process of doodling roses over and over again was pretty meditative. I had literally found my version of a Zen doodle. Now I just needed to anchor this action to a reason. So I came up with my habit of doodling roses when I’m overthinking and hence the title of this post – Roses for my worries.

Now here’s the fascinating part. We talk about the odds being in favor of us; this is the classic case of that. You see, whenever one tries to write with their non dominant hand, the main struggle is stabilizing the movement of the pen. Stability comes with years of practice. But it is the same instability that works in my favor, because roses are not symmetric in nature. What is more, it makes each rose I draw unique. Ironically, I am not fond of real, actual roses. I don’t like their scent, the fact that their stems have thorns, and the list goes on. And yet, the one doodle I can make perfectly in the blink of an eye is a rose. Life is a wonderful story teller. I do enjoy seeing the roses I doodle. It is as if each line, each curve has my worries twisted into a thing of beauty.

If you’ve read the post this far, congratulations! You’re just about to uncover the story behind the quote you read at the start of this post. Remember the Roses is a short story I read and loved in high school. It is a wonderful story featuring the brave Joan of Arc and well, roses. Towards the end of that story, Joan tells the protagonist – If you ever wanna gift me anything, bring me English Roses. And in the closing lines of that short story, the soldier says – See Jehane (Joan) I Remember the Roses! And that is also a reminder I keep giving myself, especially on weekends – Remember the Roses Zen… draw your worries away.

P.S. The photo shared above is this week’s bouquet of roses, doodled completely with my non dominant hand. An offering to my tired, overthinking mind.

Thank you for stopping by 🌹