By Letty Bassart

While some stories can only be written on ice, others demand to be tattooed in concrete.  This may or may not echo our most heartfelt desires. Like Edward Scissorhands and the Rock Biter before me, I have wasted time sighing about the impotence of my own appendages and have been lovingly referred to as iron hands and butter fingers.

It is common knowledge that you cannot ask a cherry tree for apples.  Still, in an effort to earn forgiveness and prove my worth, I have spent several years dressed as an apple, a cherry, and a tree.

All but one of our buttons evolves over time. Oprah and others have dedicated their lives to baptizing them one by one.  This morning, I tune in to PBS and find financial guru Suze Orman asserting that our name is all we have.

As children we intently craft the letters that form our designation. If we are lucky, these symbols will settle into a dining room table.  It is an early lesson in strength:  push too hard and the paper is torn, too softly, and the line is lost.

Eventually these markings evolve into our cursive signature.  In America, the signature becomes the celebrity autograph that can literally be worth millions to someone somewhere; for artists and collectors, signatures contain the weight of authenticity.

We may jot more important things than our name on a multitude of surfaces.  Still of all human texts, it most closely resembles a painting and in turn has the capacity to be more significant than its counterparts.

Maybe this has something to do with the love that goes into choosing one or the intentness with which we learn to write it.