TICK TOCK

Waking up this morning, can’t be sure if it was a dream or low level consciousness. Maybe it started out one and stretched into the other but I was aware enough to wonder what time it was. The mantle clock began it’s hourly report as if it knew I was listening. Seven chimes and I knew, it was a good time to get up. 

I got the clock nine years ago, at an antique shop in Ludington, Michigan. It was  over a hundred years old, in great shape and everything worked. When I got it home I discovered that it only worked for a day or two, then stopped. After some searching I discovered “Bryant’s Clock Restoration”. John Bryant is a relatively young man in a traditionally, old man’s trade. He restores old, “Tick-Tock” clocks. He’s old enough to have experience and young enough you would think he’ll be around another twenty years. His shop is in Kansas City's north end. It used to be known as “Little Italy” but Columbus Circle is now home to Asian and Haitian families as well. The place screams of ethnicity but the faces and the architecture just don’t seem to go together. 

I took my new, antique, intermittently working clock to John. He told me he had a six month back log and then treated me to a short course on clock repair. With old clocks, cheap short cuts yield temporary results and then you have the same dilemma all over again. So I left my clock with him. Just over six months and $400 later, I got my clock back. All of the shafts were nested in new, oversized bushings; in newly drilled holes, with new springs and rebalanced gears. I’ve got it tweaked so it only needs a reset about every other week; and then only a few minutes. 

So, 7:00 and I’m up for the day. But I’m far, far away from any bed that I would normally sleep in. My clock and I are in Dayton, Ohio to celebrate the wedding of my son Pete and his delightful, darling Betsy. The clock has been with me long enough that I can bear to let it go. I want to give them something that suggests a tangible and enduring legacy. My mantle clock is the best I can do. 

We take time for granted, but it’s a human construct. Everything about us, all of our experiences are qualified within that framework. Was it last year, or has it only been ten minutes? How long can I hold my breath? When will you call? Time! Somehow, the ticking clock gives measure to experience and centers us in the moment. In fact, time is nothing more nor less than a way to order experience. We are stuck in the present, able to remember and to anticipate but only able to act in the moment.  

The clock is real, with a practical purpose and a story of its own. Whose home moved to its rhythm a hundred years ago? Who woke up to its chime? The hand that turned the key, wound the spring; we are without a clue but that doesn’t alter its story. At most, it’s just not for us to know. For the past nine years, this striking mantle clock has been on my dresser, reassuring me in the middle of the night and reminding me from the other end of the house. Life is moving on, with memories in its wake and a thin veneer of possibility for its future. We will celebrate a wedding this evening; in another seven hours or so.