My mother’s mechanical pencil from 1981

A conversation with an old classmate made me realize I’ve been living out my mother’s values without fully understanding where they came from.

When I posted online about my six-year-old e-reader in March 2024, my high school classmate messaged me out of nowhere. She remembered the yellow mechanical pencil I’d used throughout high school—something I’d almost forgotten about. When I told her I was using a mechanical pencil that’s 43 years old, one my mother gave me from her own college days, I saw the pattern clearly for the first time.

I have kept my mother’s mechanical pencil from her first year studying civil engineering in 1981. It still works, but I haven’t bought any refill since I last used it during my masters. I’ve brought it with me wherever I live (from one transient place to another), as a memento of my mother’s college years.

Mama Belen entrusted her mechanical pencil to me when I was starting my first year in college, as an engineering student. She wanted me to put it to good use because she never really used it after she shifted to accounting. There’s an irony there. Mama Belen gave me a tool for a path she abandoned. But maybe that made it more meaningful because she was passing on not just the pencil, but the possibility she’d left behind.

I can remember how I felt elated for my mother to consider me responsible and for her to trust me with something she deeply valued.

I don’t think that mama Belen was using the pencil in 1981 thinking about her future children using it. But I’d like to believe that I got from her the ability to steward things, because she kept the pencil with her for 30 years before deciding that I was worthy of keeping it.

While we are the ones who put value on our stuff, I’d like to pass on this mechanical pencil like an heirloom. What I can’t know is whether the next person will care for it the way my mother and I have.

I thought about how inheritance isn’t just about giving. Inheritance is about whether what you’re passing on will be received. I hope whoever holds this pencil next will feel the weight of what came before. But hope is all any of us get when we try to send something forward into time.