Fountain Pens Again

I’m back into my fountain pens again. I didn’t really leave them, but for a couple of months in the summer, while travelling, I mostly wrote with gel pens, and that was really nice. And then I realized how much I had missed them—was it fountain pen day? Was it the pen show and Matthew fixing up my nibs? Was it the new Scriptus F-Cs, the Lamy 2000 Pine Green? No, it was before then that it all blossomed again. As I got home and had all my trays (the wholesaler paper Lamy Safari trays) of my pens before me, I gasped and clutched at my bosom and returned into my golem state.

I’m enjoying them once again. I’m inking them up and writing them dry and giving them away. I’m finding myself testing out each of my pens every time I sit down, totally needlessly. It has been a joy to have these little tools tucked away in my pen and wallet case, to be pulled out while waiting for the heirs to the crumbling kingdom to come out of their classes, trailing bits of paper and snack wrappers behind them as the bell rings.

Part of it also, maybe, is also as I try to adjust into our new routines, or rather, try not to be subsumed by them, drowning maniacally, is the long stretches of time I have now, waiting for this or that child to be done this or that learning. I’m a squirrel, finding different libraries or cafes or benches to shelter in, my books and journals with me, and I’m writing in spaces around the city.

Jon once said my primary problem in schlepping the kids around was that I’m unable to travel light, needing snacks and stationery and books for different kids and purposes. Look how many half-eaten baggies of crushed goldfish there are: Each kid needs one granola bar, and that’s it, he says. They can eat the wrapper if they’re still hungry. (I’m kidding, he didn’t say that. But maybe he thought it?) He stopped one step shy of calling me a bag lady, which was very gracious of him.

In any case, the sun is setting on the warm autumn days, and we are full on into crisp autumn. A bit too crisp, if you ask me, the wind coming at me from all directions. The other day Caleb started talking about snow but I didn’t quite catch what he was trying to say because I was busy blocking him out.

It was good while it lasted. Various treasures found in various places, the universe winking at me still, always.