Ode to the Pencil

This is an Ode to the Pencil. My lucky #2. There's just something so wonderful about a new pencil. You smell so good, like wood, and combined with a sharpener! I grind you down, into a point...A favorite tool!

My life is chaos, yet you bring a little order, even a little creativity. You were my first love, aside from crayons. People tout the pen, but you're the mightiest of the two! I write much more beautifully and neater with the pencil, and oh if it goes wrong I can use your glorious eraser. It can never be done with a pen. You'd have to bring out the whiteout. Pffff!

With you I can "pencil in" an appointment and not have to worry about cancelations or rescheduled events filling and messing up my calendars.

I can create lists! A list for everything I need or want or have to do. You know that same old grocery list, or once a year the back to school list that lovingly includes you. The packing list for my vacation to Hawaii, that I still haven't gone on.

You allow me to set my dreams and goals to paper, you allow me to "stick to the plan," that you so wonderfully and smoothly helped me to create. I can jot down any brilliant idea, an old timey quote, a clever joke, an improtu telephone number exchange, plan for a trip for three now that we're a family. Oh wait ... the telephone number thing is the old fashioned way.

My thoughts of you bring me back to my mother, and grandmother and phonebooks. My mother was meticulous and my grandmother was an artist. I also remember my grandfather who was a carpenter. He always came home smelling like wood chips and doublemint gum and I could always find a pencil and stick of gum in his pocket. And that's how you smell to me.

My best creative art work has been done by you first. The time I sketched my own face, the old blue, hippy jar my mom use to keep, and the time I designed my daughter's backdrop in the style of Mary Blair. And I thank you for helping to hang my grandma's artwork.

An old friendship stemmed in elementary school, when it was so tough to have to go to pen. These days you're hard to find around when i need you, but when I hold you now I feel as if I grew up when Rock and Roll was born, when mothers kept their lipstick on, and boys and girls collected horse figures and toys, and when sharpeners were bolted to school furniture.

This is our story, of me and my darned pencil.