For years, I prized my Parker Big Reds above all my other pens, though I loved every one of them—even boring clear-plastic Bics, even the fall-apart-instantly kind that come in the mail from nonprofits trying to guilt-trip you into making a donation. I take the free ballpoints from hotel rooms, just to have them. But for serious work, I always used the Reds.

The Big Red was originally a supersize red fountain pen that the Parker Pen Company introduced in 1921. In 1970 Parker revived it as a Deco-styled ballpoint that took a Jotter refill (with the help of two black plastic adapters) and came in a rainbow of colors. It cost $1.69, and I got three: red, orange, and black. Once, talking to an editor at the publishing company where I worked, I noticed on his desk a cup holding all the other Red colors and coveted every one. I should have run out and bought them, but I told myself three was enough.

Before laptops and smartphones, pens were critical. Research and interviewing meant taking notes by hand, writing as fast as possible. Big Reds were perfectly designed for my hand, with a curved flange set exactly the right distance from the tip. I could spend hours in libraries scribbling on yellow pads or—with a personal shorthand I’d developed—catch most every word an interviewee said without getting a cramp. I kept the red one in my handbag, the others at home. They were my go-tos for years. Then one day, doing research at the library for a book I was writing, I got up to use the restroom and stashed the red pen in my pants pocket. At some point it slipped out, but I didn’t realize that until I heard a clunk and saw it spiraling down the drain as I flushed. 

Gone! My first wild thought was to go after it somehow. But since that was impossible I had to abide the ache of loss, blaming myself for being so careless. Worse, I discovered that the nouveau Red was now passé. I couldn’t find one anywhere. My black and orange Reds became more precious than ever and I was afraid to take them out of the house. (I was raised by the daughter of a pogrom survivor with the philosophy that if disaster can strike more than once, it will.) I bought other pens that resembled the Red—a sleek black one with a similar flange comes to mind—but none had the right angle or grip. 

These days I don’t take notes by hand. I scan printed pages into PDFs to mark up. I type as I interview. And it’s all searchable! Writing is now much more efficient, though I worry that my material doesn’t sink in as deeply as it used to when I had to search repeatedly through reams of yellow note pages for the details I wanted. 

Though I no longer need my orange and black Reds for sustained writing, I keep them sitting on my desk. And I still miss the red one, as though it had left a hole in me. Once I went on eBay, source of old lost things, and discovered that the same Reds that cost me $1.69 are now valuable antiques. Unused “vintage” Big Reds, still enclosed in plastic on the original piece of cardboard, range from around $35 up to $199. “The Big Red is a magnificent writing instrument,” urged one seller. “Own a piece of history.” An object so venerable and precious should be worth $35. But I didn’t buy it. 

Then why do I still miss it? I found a clue in an interview with Ruth Ozeki about her novel The Book of Form and Emptiness, in which a boy hears objects speaking to him. Ozeki, a Zen priest, explains that in Shinto, the traditional animist religion of Japan, “things … have spirits.” Marie Kondo operates out of this tradition, which is why she instructs us to treat objects with “recognition and care.” “We have a real relationship with our objects, right?” asks Ozeki. “They’re not just things that come into our lives and that we throw away.” 

I had thought of  Kondo as just a fashion of the moment. But Ozeki’s comment landed. I’ve always felt a relationship with objects I prized—certain dolls, an alexandrite ring, my ancient three-speed Rudge bike. One reason I haven’t traded in that bicycle for a 10-speed is because I’d feel much as I did when I realized I couldn’t take care of my dog properly and had to give her away. The Big Red remains the best writing implement I’ve ever used, and that’s a kind of connection, isn’t it? 

“Wouldn’t it be better if we treated our objects with more respect,” Ozeki asks, “if we didn’t build obsolescence into our things so that we had to throw them away and buy new things?” Thinking about objects this way “enchants” them, as she puts it. And an enchanted world vibrates with aliveness and meaning.

In Kondo’s decluttering ritual, you ask whether an object sparks joy in you. Those pens did spark joy in me. They still do, enough that I don’t want to throw them away. So I use them when I can for that joy’s sake.