When my father passed away, he’d remarried and had been working and living in Frankfurt, Germany. Most of his possessions and much of my childhood history either went into a storage facility behind Apple’s VG6 building where I later worked, or with him to Germany in the initial move or during the following years as he would visit stateside.
Very few of his positions remained at the house we’d grown up in, and after he’d passed away, I found myself wanting something, anything, of historical and personal significance. We’d completely forgotten about the storage locker. It likely got auctioned off, forgotten and left dormant, and somewhere in Silicon Valley, there’s some precious audio and technical artifacts in somebody else’s possession. Although my brother was given the Jose Grant puzzle wedding band he’d worn before his death, I was lacking something tangible and physical, left seeking something that was definitely ‘his’, too, that I could hold in my hand.
My dad loved using fountain pens. I never ‘got it’, it seemed messy, complicated and a lot of work compared to a simple Bic or a handful of "Mercury Savings" freebee click-pens that also doubled as spring loaded "guns" if you knew how to rework them. But he loved a good fountain pen, he used them constantly, and one pen, in particular, was iconic and consistently clipped to his shirt pocket. A Parker fountain pen. It sat with his keys and wallet and coins each night, routinely carried daily much like I carry my iPhone. It was an essential component of his attire and daily routine.
I don’t know how or why it was at the house and not with him when he passed away. I don’t recall if it was given to us when we went to his funeral. I honestly don’t recall much of that whole experience, it’s a painfully blurry period I seem to have sleep-walked through. On more than one occasion my brother reminds me of an incident I have absolutely no recollection of. But one way or another, I ended up getting that pen, and it’s been in my possession ever since. I’ve kept it in a box of very treasured mementos, including the hospital identification band I’d worn on the 1st day of my life. And that pen means more than anything else in it.
While working this week to revive my private blog, I started to rethink it's ‘header’ image options. This fed into my realization that, for that more segregated and personal site, as much as I loved the pixelated ’90’s header I’d painstakingly crafted from “BeOS” icons during my earliest days of blogging, that site had evolved over time, and was not well represented by the header image. I wanted to replace it with something more relative of the introspective nature of my use of that site today. I wanted to own that effort and intention fully, with a visual reminder of the preciousness that personal thought and reflection, memories, and something as simple as a fountain pen can represent in retrospect.
So, here it is. Tarnished and treasured…. my father’s Parker fountain pen.
I hope I can live up to the emotional legacy it represents to me.
From this day on I own my father's gun.
We dug his shallow grave beneath the sun.
I laid his broken body down below the Southern land,
It wouldn't do to bury him where any Yankee stands.
I'll take my horse and I'll ride the northern plain.
To wear the color of the greys and join the fight again.
I'll not rest until I know the cause is fought and won.
From this day on until I die I'll wear my father's gun.
- “My Father’s Gun” - Elton John/Bernie Taupin