I was sitting in Bryant Park in New York City, writing in my daily journal at one of their rickety metal tables while sitting on a damp metal chair, as one does when one is ever-so-cosmopolitan. That is to say, it was the occasion of my monthly trip on the train to New York City from Philadelphia. I get a senior citizen discount, and then I take the subway and the bus everywhere all day long.

Bryant Park is hosting its annual Christmas Winter Village, and lots of little wooden booths with heaters and electricity were glowing all around me. It had rained in the morning, which was why everything was a little wet, but as my grandmother would say, I wouldn’t melt because of a little rain. There was nothing I wanted to buy–the tchotchke percentage in the booths was high–but I had already done my shopping for the day, because I had a new pen.

As I was unscrewing the pen to fill it, “Is that a fountain pen?” said a woman’s voice, and I looked up to see a cheerful white-haired lady standing nearby, next to another less glossy but still comfortable-looking lady.

“Do you use fountain pens?” I said, and we talked for a good ten minutes. She confessed she didn’t like to spend too much on pens, so she used Pilot Kakunos. I showed her my Jinhao Dadao 9019, which cost less than $20 (less than a bottle of some of the inks I use) and which looks like a large luxury demonstrator pen, and then my Esterbrook and my Kaweco pencil for good measure. Her friend didn’t use fountain pens; her joy was needlework, she said.

My fellow pen-user asked me if I used special paper, like the Hobonichi planners that fountain pen fanatics are obsessive about, and I laughed and gestured at the marbled composition book I was about to write in. “I use a fine point nib, and honestly it works just fine,” I said, opening the journal.

I just wanted to show her that with a fine nib, the ink doesn’t spread out or show through on the other side of the sheet, even though a marbled composition book is the cheapest possible paper.

But I realized, when they started exclaiming, that opening my journal was a miraculous reveal, because (a) I write copiously, in a small, neat cursive script that is regular and clear, (b) I write the date in an ornamental blackletter Gothic with a broad italic nib, and (c) this month I started doing a line-sketch in ink of an insect, in every entry, because it’s a little daily task I set myself for no reason, so my journal looks like an illuminated manuscript.

“Are you an artist?” she exclaimed? “Do you have a card I could have?”

“No card,” I said, “I’m retired,” and we all laughed, a real laugh of release.

Because we were all about the same age, and we were all doing okay, we all knew that being retired is even more of a secret joy than collecting fountain pens.

When you’re retired, you don’t have to sell yourself. You can be discovered, certainly, as they had discovered me, but you don’t have any obligation to sell anything. When you are retired, you are rich beyond the dreams of avarice, because if you have enough money to take a train on a senior discount once a month, if you can save up to buy a little stationery, and if you have enough money to eat and pay your utilities, you have more wealth than a Byzantine prince. That’s though my income is less than half what it was when I was working.

Everyone deserves to be retired, so that what they do for fun doesn’t have to make money. And honestly, everyone deserves to have a moment when someone, by surprise, discovers what you do for fun. And then you can go back to sitting on a damp chair and writing in your journal, just for the sheer pleasure of thinking on paper.

Those ladies gave me a priceless gift, the gift of easy, happy recognition, and of a shared experience. I hope they know how much their friendly attention meant to me.