Exactly how odd it is that I seem to be emotionally attached to a freebie black plastic ink pen given out by my bank?
It is just a pen, it is just a bank, albeit staffed by unusually friendly people. People I really needed to be friendly last summer when I was sorting through my life, and the lives of my children, after my husband left.
I imagine most folks have some sort of trove – maybe old jewelry, bits of paper, a stone, even a stale piece of hard candy. That special thing.
A stash of economically valueless items that have become priceless not for what they are, but because they hold what cannot be captured in a word, or an expression – it is held in the thing – yes, the special thing.
Relationships and the people that populate them are sometimes such things. Stand-in’s, sometimes stunt doubles, for energy passing by that wanted to be. The stuff that drops into our world as process or form, for us to be able to see or reflect on it. Memento’s of habit and flesh, or the occasional pen.
And we keep ’em. At least, from time to time, I do. To remember the good, or the not-so-good energy that once passed through. And because the special thing has the power to stop, to dissuade relentless time, for just the length of a black plastic pen.
It lies with two other, less remarkable pens, at the bottom of my worn leather purse. Reminds me of these times when so little means so much.
Shouldn't...but Do 