Pen Show

including a beautiful story

A week of distractions. I will call them distractions of importance, distractions that are completely internal, that are not to be written or spoken about.

No matter how much I want to keep my commitment to be here, to write every day, I physically feel something beyond my control that keeps me silent. It is as if my voice turns itself off. I pick up my pen, only to find my voice does not want to speak through it. It does not allow it.

Speaking of pens, I will share a story that in its own way is life-giving.

Several weeks ago, I saw an ad for a Pen Show, a paper and pen show, a fountain pen show, a show of all kinds of pens, journals, etc. A real live in the hand pen show.

I keep writing that because I did not know there was such a thing, especially in this world that feels overwhelmingly of technology.

Two loves of my life are pens and journals so you can imagine the immense delight when the show came to my attention.

One of my favorite framed pictures is of pens I wish were real and mine. They remind me of notes and letters written and cards sent.

Never in my imagination could I have imagined a room with so many pens, hundreds, perhaps thousands. Table after table, row after row of vendors from all over the country.

Apparently pen shows are a thing and now I know. Not just for one day but for three, held in various cities around the country.

I was in pen heaven.

Of all the details seen and learned, there are two conversations that continue to stand out.

I asked one of the vendors about the business of pens, wondering how business is. For a conference so big (there was also a variety of classes offered over the three days, an example being calligraphy) I marveled that a living could be made selling pens.

His said the business is growing. People are tiring of always being at the keyboard and looking at a screen. They are beginning to be drawn back to holding a pen in hand, paper ready to receive the ink and whatever their style of writing.

That comment almost gave me chills and certainly elicited a joyful response

That leads me to one of the last conversations I had as my daughter and I were nearing the end of exhibitors.

I asked a vendor who I think was around 40 years old why pens. How did he choose this business.

First of all, he loves them.

He picked up a little notebook and told me how he is also practicing writing in cursive. He showed me page after page of progress in all different ink colors.

It is his commitment to learn, or likely re-learn, what many would call old-fashioned and not taught anymore in most schools.

The story of the cursive commitment is this: when he and his wife were getting married, his grandmother, who is no longer living, gave them the gift of a letter. It was in her cursive handwriting.

He lovingly said every time he looks at the letter, he feels her presence, partly because of the personality of it being her unique writing. He sees her. He feels her.

He wants to be someone who sends notes and letters to people that when they pick them up, it is as if he is present.

There is a difference and it matters.

A gift of life-giving words he will treasure forever and now hold as an intention of his own, of his heart.

I understand.

I miss handwritten letters. I used to write them, often 5 or 7 or more pages.

I received them, too, and to this day, when I see my mother’s handwriting or my dad signing off on one of her letters with his big scrawled “Daddy” I feel them nearby.

I feel their love all over again.

Who knew that there is such a thing as a pen show? And who knew that when I went, I would be privileged to hear such a heart story when given the invitation to tell it.

Inviting stories.

Let’s do this.

I deeply believe there are so many reasons during these times we need to hear one another’s stories, whether we know each other or it is a first and random conversation.