Happiness is a Warm Pen

Happiness exists many places:  the brilliant smile of my husband when he is laughing at one of my lame jokes, the moment my kids run toward me with open arms, their laughter when we are playing, their silence when they are sleeping.

But if I were to talk about the happiness that I create for myself, the happiness that is not derived from my amazing family, I’d say that happiness comes from a warm pen.

I love to crack open a new notebook, touch my pen to the paper and feel the ballpoint glide across a fresh, clean sheet. There is something to putting pen to paper that is unlike clicking away on the keyboard.  It is organic.  The barrier between mind and paper seems to melt away and the words seem to flow.  As I click on the keyboard, I tend to self-edit: back-space,tap, tap, tap, tap, back-space, back-space, tap, tap, tap.  This does not happen when I put pen to paper.  It is just one continuous writing fury.  Disjointed and illogical as the thoughts may be, they flow like wine in the days of Dionysus.  The passage may start with neat, clean penmanship, but it certainly does not end that way; a mess of scribbles cover the paper in all their glory. The text is a literary, composition, and grammatical train-wreck. Yet it is uninhibited, raw, and, better still, a reminder.

A reminder – that in that moment when the pen flows so freely, when the warm wave of exhilaration washes over me, when my cheeks flush, and a fire bursts forth from the page – that in that moment, I am alive, with all my faculties still intact and well lubricated.  I am reminded that amidst the fog and cobwebs that comes with years of sleep-deprivation and the parenting of young children, my intellect, thoughts, ideas, opinions are still there, ripe for the taking.  Reminded that I still have a spark – some fight – left in me.  I can still hold my own, offer something to the world, make an argument, create. It does not happen nearly as often as it should, this unencumbered brain dump. But there it is.

I exist on that mess of a paper, formerly a crisp clean page. It is a metaphor unto itself. But in that metaphor lives one truth.

I exist.

And that makes me happy.