My left hand vs my right hand

Ibroke my drawing arm. For the first time in my life I was not able to use my right hand to make art. About five decades ago, my mother gave me a book of cartoons by James Thurber and a piece of paper. I traced the cartoons and it made her laugh. Or at least smile. I found that I could spend hours alone doodling. I was painfully shy, so drawing was a way to express myself without having to say a word.

I’ve been drawing cartoons ever since then, hoping to make everyone else laugh.

Moments after I broke my right arm, I didn’t immediately worry about being able to draw. It was something I had always taken for granted. As I sat in the emergency room waiting to be helped, my arm lay still and limp by my side. I looked at it hanging from my shoulder, and a possibility dawned on me: Can I move my fingers? I could. Thus began a new relationship with my right hand and the ability to draw that, since I was a child, had given my life purpose.

And I began a new relationship with my left hand.

Over the course of the first week with my right arm in a plaster splint, I alternately felt compassion for my left hand and worry for my right. I tried drawing with my left hand and found that it could do the job.

I noticed the drawings created by my left hand were much looser and were not always close to what I had intended. They looked more like the drawings that I had done as a child. So was this left-hand usage tapping into my original creativity? The excitement of drawing with my left hand and realizing that I could do it kept me busy for days.

Then I began obsessing about my immobile right hand. It was swollen and it looked sad. I worried that it would be disfigured forever and that I wouldn’t be able to ever use it effectively again. When this is all over, I’m going to draw all the time, never stop, was my internal vow. I’ll never take my right arm for granted again.

Around the second week after my accident, the splint came off. I found I could draw with my right hand supported. It wasn’t good drawing, but it wasn’t bad, either.

As I slowly started to use my right hand again, I worried about my left. Should I reassure the left hand, “Don’t worry, I’ll keep using you”?

If I do, I doubt she will believe me. While there’s something charming about the drawings I do with my left hand, the right hand is so much quicker. Sometimes I think I can hear my right hand saying, “Oh, let me help you,” as my left hand struggles.

In the middle of my recovery, my two hands appeared to be equal in skill.

My question about my left-hand drawing was this: Are the drawings it creates fresher? My right hand has been drawing for five decades. Maybe it’s gotten too smug, too confident.

While drawing with my left hand, I wonder: Do the ideas come about differently? Is the connection between my brain and that hand different? Other than playing instruments, my brain and my left hand have not had much of a creative relationship.

While drawing with my left hand, faces are easy, relatively speaking. Straight lines are not, which makes sense since it took years for my right hand to draw a straight line well.

Expressions are fine, but the execution of hair gets a little wacky. My left hand is not particularly good at drawing hands — well, my right hand always took a shortcut on hands anyway (sometimes my people have three fingers).

I was born right-handed; I was not one of those kids born using her left hand and forced to switch to my right. In high school I became aware of the belief that left-handed people are more creative, and it instilled some doubt about my creativity. Up until my accident, I still had those doubts.

My left-handed drawings have put an end to that.

It has been several months now since I’ve called on my left hand to draw. My right is perking along, perhaps not as smug. ■ Liza Donnelly is a writer and cartoonist who frequently contributes to the New Yorker.