Pencil Stub

Dear Rosa

I am aware this is my first letter to you in the twenty-odd years we have known each other.  Not that I didn’t care. But maybe I didn’t care enough. And then there was the inherent dislike of putting pen to paper. You may recall how, unlike you, I hated making notes or even underlining sentences while we read books, sometimes in the library or at my place. I never felt the need for it. Youth is arrogant that way. I believed I could chart my own life and that other people’s experiences played no role in my learning or growth. But age changes us. Now older, if I read something interesting or unusual, I underline it or add remarks in the margin for reference later. And I use a pencil. Always a pencil. Not the young, tall, self-obsessed instrument, perennially eager to dispense unsolicited advice. But the old, spent, age-shrunken pencil stub, bearing a halo of years of wisdom and experience. I underline and write in the margins, my remarks now fused with personal experience and understanding. I am not sure what has brought this change in behaviour. Or why I am writing to you now after all this time. Perhaps it’s age. I realize I have less and less time to get things right.

Phillip