By Betsy Gonwa, 
I am writing with a different pen than I intended. After looking through the entire house, even in places I don’t usually use pens or keep pens, and starting to look in the same places again, here I sit, writing. It is a nice pen. A fine quality of pen, even one I would consider high quality, and seek as a preferred pen. But what I was experiencing, as I walked around, looking, was disappointment. Loss. The unexpected absence of something I was anticipating. And I liken it to the bigger adjustment I am going through now, as I seek to find a new normal.
It’s just a pen. But it ties into my strategy of being organized, a way of being that gives me peace of mind. I know where things are and I know I can find what I need when I need it.
When my children were growing up, I remember being very protective of certain items of which there was only one: the scissors, the pin needed to inflate whatever sporting ball was in play at the time, and the TV remote. The TV remote was quite a challenge. It would inevitably get buried and require a thorough search of cushions and other underneath locations, until my husband – ingeniously, I thought – strapped it to a piece of wood with a cross bar. We were probably the only family with a crucified remote! These items had purposes, and I had solutions to keep them available when needed. My need was for ease when the moment of need came.
But my misplaced pen represents a different kind of loss. It is not ease or peace of mind. It is attachment. It’s linked to a desire. Desires in and of themselves are beautiful, even sacred. And this is what we are all grieving now – unmet expectations, plans, hopes and dreams.
The first week of Safer-at-Home, I was like my self looking for the pen that wasn’t where I expected it to be. In looking back, I label that my week of being discombobulated.
The time I am settling into now is different. It is acknowledging that I may never find that pen. To be truthful, I am still wondering if it will turn up some day. It’s bound to, right? With the safer-at-home order, I have not been in the habit of transporting myself nor my pens anywhere recently. And this place of holding onto the desire or letting go of the desire is where we all are right now with the coronavirus pandemic. We have been imagining that this is temporary and that we will one day be able to return to our old ways. Like me, believing that I am writing with a different pen as a makeshift solution. But is it?
Perhaps my pen will not turn up. And if it doesn’t, my relationship to my desire will change yet again, and I will move into an even different place.
Where are you in your journey to the new normal? Are you still discombobulated? Are you angry and frustrated? Are you hopeful? Are you accepting? And how are you feeling about where you are right now?
