A Love Like the Sun

What I Remember

WHAT I REMEMBER

A span of years. The pen.

An ordinary white ballpoint pen with black ink and joyjewels engraved across the length. Given to my father, Dennis Thompson, and hundreds of other employees by factory owners who showed their appreciation for a solid production year in pens instead of pay raises. But Dennis believed in transferring energy into objects; he did it with his guitar each day, and so he gathered his nerves, every fiber of his imposter syndrome, and channeled it into the pen. It was in his pocket when he pitched himself and landed an assistant manager position.

The pen was lost and found four times after that, the logo half worn, out of ink from normal use but prized all the same. When my mother needed fibroids the size of tennis balls removed from her uterus, the thought of getting put to sleep for surgery and never waking up terrified her, so my father got down on his knees in front of her tear-stricken face and pulled the pen from his pocket. Issac and I, both thirteen, watched from our waiting room chairs as he told her, “Put all of your fear into this pen.” She refused at first, though didn’t call him silly, only argued the doctors wouldn’t let her have it in the surgical room. But my father convinced a nurse to let my mother keep the pen up until the moment she was put to sleep. Vanessa Thompson, nervous as she still was, gripped it to her chest as she walked through the double doors and into surgery.

While my mother was grief-stricken three years later, unable to even glance at my father’s things, I took the pen from his drawer. During his wake, while everyone else had beautiful words to say about him, I felt I needed to hold the pen close just to stand next to his casket in silence.

Nearly four years ago, I drove Issac 185 miles in my beat-up Honda to his first brand-official photo shoot in New York. When we arrived, he said, “Screw the shoot, let’s go eat pizza instead.”

I was confused—we were just dreamy over the possibility of this job changing his life.

But then he asked, “What if this path takes me from you?”

Which is when I thought of my then boyfriend Noel, who’d recently proposed to me after I caught him cheating with a girl from our college classes, whose reason was that he was never sure how I felt about him and was jealous of the deeper connection I seemed to have with Issac. Noel, who said he’d wait for me to open up to him if I could forgive him for his mistake. But in the car with my best friend that day, I felt the same fear I did the night Noel got down on one knee. I could understand why he needed more attention, needed words that were hard for me to form, but what if that path—forgiveness and marriage to someone who never gave me butterflies but provided companionship—took me from Issac somehow? My throat was thick. I squeezed Issac’s shoulder, promised us both, “Nothing will keep us apart.”

There was no future for me that meant a lesser connection with Issac. I handed him my dad’s pen, which I still kept close, and said, “This is yours until I need it again. Now go in there and be brave.”

I haven’t held the pen since.