Pens, lost and found

Last updated on February 1, 2023

All my life, I wanted a nice pen. My father had a golden Cross pen and pencil set, and I just loved it. The weight conferred a sense of importance upon anything written with it, from my fourth grade Social Studies paper to my college applications.

When I graduated from high school, I asked for a pen of my own. “You’ll get lots of them as gifts,” my mother assured me. Pen tally: zero. “You don’t want one now anyway,” she rationalized. “It’ll just get lost at college.”

Three and a half years passed (I graduated early) and I again asked for a pen as a graduation fit. “You’ll have pens coming out your ears,” she said. “Trust me.”

No pen.

I was, perhaps, more bummed about this than I should have been. The first thing I did was to gather the cash from my cards and set out on a quest for a pen. “Oh, for god’s sake, save your money,” she said. “If you really want one that badly, I’ll buy it for you.”

And so, on a cold day in January, we went pen shopping. I found the right style immediately: the Cross Townsend ballpoint. It was thick and well-weighted, exactly what I wanted. Then comes the part of the story that makes it the quintessential Mom Gift. This pen came in three colors: all gold, a stunning blue and a graphite gray that was unnaturally prone to fingerprints and smudges on its finish. The gray one was on clearance; guess which one I got?

I love this pen still, probably even more so for its sentimental story value. It spends its time permanently clipped to the elastic strap on my Moleskine notebook. And then, suddenly, it wasn’t. And I panicked.

I do a pretty good job of shielding my 3-year-old from my more irrational hysteria, but there must have been something in my voice when I said, “Uh-oh. My pen is missing.” He jumped into action. “What pen? The nice one?” He thought for a moment. “I’ll go ask Dad if he borrowed it.” The answer, of course, was no; I could hear him ask, “Are you sure?” as if my husband might have forgotten that he’d taken my pen to work. By the time he returned to the kitchen, his empathy had kicked in full force. He offered to buy me a new one with the money from his piggy bank. I was touched by the gesture and gave him a hug.

Then his eyes lit up. “I know where it is!” he shouted. He ran to the other side of the room where my new birthday gift sat, a laptop bag. Of course! The pen came loose while I was stuffing the bag to see if all of my junk would fit in it!

He held it high like the Stanley Cup trophy, ran across the room and gently placed it in my hand.

“Thank you,” I said, giving him another hug.

“Go write things,” he said. “And if this one wears out, I’ll buy you a new one, ok?”

Kiddo, I promise that one day I’ll let you write your fourth grade Social Studies paper with this pen.

* This post was handwritten and transcribed.