This week's Theme Thursday leads to an interesting phenomenon, the marking of time. Humans have watches, clocks, timepieces and even calendars denoting hours, minutes, days and months that frame the events and even the people of significance in our lives.
I, for example, possess several watches. One is a registered Omega bearing the time that my mother removed it shortly before her death. Another belongs to my dearly missed granddad. Well-worn but still ticking away, it occupies a special place in my heart and home. Yet a third rested on the wrist of my dad nearly every day of his time with my mother and me. I have memories of his wrist, the pale outline marked the infrequent absences of that watch visible in the waves at the beach, stark in contrast to his waders, or marking the end of a tan earned while building and baiting crab traps, or collecting sea shells.
The beautiful floor-to-ceiling clock that graced the more formal portion of my parents home, chiming in holidays, punctuating the eeriness of my mother's return to their home a widow following what was supposed to have been a second honeymoon, and lending its steady beat beneath many a roiling argument, now sits a silent sentinel in my small apartment, two changes of house stilling its once faithful rhythm. Its face is pictured above.
Perhaps I can restore its timbre...
14 comments:
Hi e; time as been in short supply for me, so no posting or blog reading. How are you?
"punctuating the eeriness of my mother's return to their home a widow following what was supposed to have been a second honeymoon, and lending its steady beat beneath many a roiling argument, now sits a silent sentinel in my small apartment"
wow! you had me there...intriguing the memories that the clock chimes represent when we hear them.
Nice post! It is amazing how many clocks we have all around us, isn't it?
Strange how many of today's posts mention clocks or watches which, appropriately enough, remind them of specific moments in time.
Hi Tut, Brian and Wings,
Thanks for stopping by. I hope you all are having an enjoyable evening.
Tut-
Things are okay, still waiting, but otherwise doing well. I hope you are doing the same and I'm glad if you are busy with work. I wish you and yours a wonderful summer! L's SAT math problem blew my mind!
Brian-
I'm glad you enjoy my writing. I'm always concerned about exposing a bit to much, hence the reason for the intrigue I suppose...
Wings-
You're right...As a species, humans are very concerned with time--it's almost like we want to hold on to something that can't really be constrained. Nice to meet you and thanks for your comment.
Oh e, very similar to my little post. Do repair it, such a lovely old thing. So sad that your mum returned from her holiday a widow. Hope you're not too achey now that the warmer weather's here!
Hi e! Am I to undrstand that your Mom's watch stopped working, soon after she removed it? Chilling, that. I oft imagine if there were no concept of time; but it seems like humans have always had a way of marking it. Nice post :)
I really enjoyed your post. It is only by memories such as yours do we really realize just how important the ones in our lives are to us and how we measure all the memories by time.
That is a lovely clock indeed.
My mother has been trying to get an old clock fixed for years now - it is hard to find people that know how to do it, anymore!
I hope you are able to get it going again though. Imagine what your thoughts will be when you first hear it chiming again!
All the best to you, e it's good to see you "out and about" again - I hope that means some good things are happening.
If I don't get back, have a lovely weekend!
There must be about 12 posts lurking inside of this one.
Very pretty, E, very pretty.
A beautiful clock, and all those poignant memories, too.
lovely pieces and memories
family clocks are particularly precious i think
What a beautiful old clock, and so full of significance too.
You did not wind the omega, yes? I think it is interesting in ways we all choose different ways to remember relationships and death, and in your case you write in a Borges style (which means I like it, but also that way of turning the practical assumed and overlooked into the symbolic) about clock and watches. I enjoyed reading it and seeing your longhouse which I would like to know is restored, but then it is yours because it is theirs and you share it.
Do you wear a watch.
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