The Missing Pens

I ask myself that no longer, because today, in a fit of trying to work some things out that have been bothering me, I took out my old paper diary--leather bound, gilt-edges, a golden ribbon sewn into the binding that you can use to mark your page, made by Letts of London--and decided to write on paper, only for me, not for an audience. And I decided to use one of my fountain pens.

Fountain pens--a wonderful creation, particularly if you have nice handwriting. I have nice handwriting. I have it because when I was 10 years old and starting 6th grade (yup, I was a youngin') I moved to San Francisco and began attending the Convent of the Sacred Heart, where I would go to school for the next 7 years. The Convent elementary school did not approve of messy handwriting, which mine was. In fact, they so disapproved of it that I had to take a special handwriting class after school and do handwriting exercises until my hand cramped every night. I hated every minute of it. But I have beautiful, flowing handwriting now.

Of course, since I don't use handwriting as much any more, my hand is falling out of practice. Not to worry: do some exercises, teach your hand how to move again, and voila! Beautiful writing, once again.

(Best quote ever from Sean Connery: Discipline is always worthwhile.)

So I had my leather-bound "secret" diary and I went on the hunt for my fountain pens. More specifically, I went to the cabinet where I knew they were: the "hobby" cabinet, named for no better reason than I put my fountain pen stuff in there, and all of the photos we've stocked up and have never put in a book. I opened the carved box I knew contained the fountain pens and--

They weren't there.

I searched the cabinet. No pens. I knew they were in a leather case my mother-in-law had given me a few years ago specifically to hold pens; there was no leather case.

Panic.

I started searching the house, starting with the drawers by the bed in our bedroom and in the guest room. I used to keep the pens in the nightstand by our bed in our old house, which is now the bedroom set in the guest room. I found plenty of stuff that had been moved in the cabinets, because it was all still there.

No pens.

Not in my desk, not in the boxes of stuff that are still sitting around our house. I found some other stuff that we'd bothered moving, but not these beloved pens of mine. I have two collections of things: Tarot cards and fountain pens. I like the pens more. Maybe it's sexual, who knows..

I am sick. I know, I know: never love anything that cannot love you back. But these pens...these were works of art. I found one pen (a hardwood pen, another gift from my mother-in-law), but only because that pen has its own hardwood case and was not in the leather case.

I know the pens are in this house; they have to be.

Out come my obsessive-compulsive tendencies. I want to rip this place apart until I find them. I feel adrenaline coursing through me. I am eyeing every possible place that they could be by blocking out everywhere I know they are not--for example, our rows of bookshelves have disappeared from my vision because I can see that they only hold books. I am getting fidgety and antsy.

This kind of anxiety is not doing much for my intention to write in my "secret" diary much. I can't write--I have a mission!

The other thing that has somehow gotten loose in this house since we moved in is the envelope of "stuff from the safety-deposit box." I know we had this envelope, because two of the things in it were our passports, which expired and which we've since gotten renewed. I know where those passports are.

I don't know where that envelope of other things has gotten to, or more specifically where the things that are in the envelope are. Like my birth certificate or my other passport, my Irish passport (yes, it's legal, don't go apoplectic) is. The Irish passport is due to expire soon; I'd like to get it renewed as well.

Darin has no time for this. This is how Darin cleans up: he puts all the "junk" in a box and lets the junk sit for x number of months. Then, after x months, clearly he hasn't needed anything in it, so he throws it out.

Unless, of course, he's missing something, in which case we tear the house apart.

I know what I'm going to be doing this holiday season: going through the remaining boxes, ripping through everything in this house in a bid to find these things that missing...and put the stuff that still hasn't found a place in a place. Darin's parents will be here; I have a list of tasks I already know I'm going to assign them.

Number one, unpack these boxes and tell me what you find in them. Be on the lookout for these items: 1, 2, 3.