The Name's Sake

When I was a child, I carried around a small green metal box that held a variety of pencils. Short ones. New ones. Broken ones. And in the bottom right hand corner of the box, there was a small latch under which I could hide small objects.

I was never allowed to write with a pen. Both my mother and father explained that pens were for adults and despite the fact that Mrs. Frump, my second grade teacher, had forbade me and my classmates from bringing pens into her room, we knew she kept one in her desk drawer. It was navy blue and it had gold writing on the side that read Lenox Inn at the Berkshires. No one knew if this was actually where she got the pen, and truth be told, Munson Baker was the only student who had ever seen it. Mrs. Frump believed in leading by example and therefore never used the pen during school hours.

Once Munson told me where the pen was, I stole it and kept it in the secret compartment of my pencil box. Eventually Mrs. Frump gave up, assuming that perhaps one evening she had put it in her purse, used it to sign for something, and never returned it to its drawer. Like with money, the absentminded nature of human beings had allowed the pen to become another form of currency, making its way around the world from one unknowing guardian to the next.

At this age, there are stories of a life of adventure, but right now I can’t stop thinking about why adults consistently segregate the pen from a child. Pens meant permanence. With a pencil you could make many mistakes, as we often do in the early years of our lives. Perhaps it is a contradiction for a child to use a pen. After all, pens require an air of confidence in spelling and inspire the ability to be accurate the first time around. In some way, I truly believe that my parents thought giving pens to children condoned an arrogance about a life yet to be lived.

But now, as I reach the twilight of my life, and all I can think of is the smell of my pencil box and how after I sharpened and sharpened one of my pencils, it would get smaller and smaller. When I

could no longer write with it, I dismissed it for a newer one, a longer one, a more colorful one.

I live in a large home, an estate that I purchased for myself with the money from my very first novel. There are endless corridors, one of a kind antiques, beautiful gardens, and the pool I always wanted but haven’t swam in for over four decades. But there is no green pencil box. My house is full of elegant looking pens and there's not a pencil in sight.

It was easy when I was young to fantasize about a pen when all I had was a pencil. Youth blinded me to the disadvantages of a pen. There was an inability to comprehend that even in this fleeting permanence one finds both the expiration and eternalization of all things painful. Love. Loss. Tragedy.

Long ago the pen was the forbidden fruit. But the truth is, I don’t remember the last time I used a pencil. Pens have brought me everything I have today. Around every corner in this house is another guest room. Another chair untouched. A bed unslept in. An armoire empty of clothing. A memory of the ghosted existence of each perfectly adorned room.

When we are young, the idea of a life unfinished, undetermined, unknown, is both the privilege and the gift of youth. When we are older and thinking of unfinished lives, it’s true that someone else will always draw our stories to a close. We can never do this ourselves. The pencil I discarded in the ignorance of my youth is now my great compunction. Each morning, in the hours before the world awakes, the thought of it haunts me and my Xanadu.

Oh how I want it back, if only to polish the innumerable regrets of my past and smile at the prospects of what someone will say about me in my notice.