The clock says…

 

A few years ago, Terry and I bought a clock.

When I say a few years ago, we’re actually talking many years ago. Fifteen or more years ago. (It’s been a while.)

We picked it out as a decorative piece. Clock face, suspended in the air by two side pieces. Under it, a pendulum swings.

And yes, that pendulum makes the classic tick-tick-tick noise.

(By the way, is it just me that finds the word pendulum being spelled by using the letter U twice weird? It just seems funny. Looks funny. Sounds right, I suppose. Still, weird.)

Over the years, that tick-tick-ticking has been a very strange thing. Some nights, we don’t even notice it. Others, it seems to fill up the darkness like a metronome set to the highest of volume options. Honestly, once or twice a year, it feels like it has a depth to it that’s rich, full and echoes.

We’ve pulled the batteries out of it on some nights. Woken on mornings to find that guests used towels to freeze the pendulum. It’s not unusual to just close the door to the room where it currently sits. The tick-tick-ticking ranges from barely registering above a whisper to might cause phone calls from the neighbors.

But perhaps the funniest thing about it, for me, is that it almost appears like incidental music in a movie or television show. If something is going on, movement and noise and attention-grabbing, you’d never even hear it. It’s not there. But when the world pauses for a breath, and there’s a silence to be filled, suddenly tick-tick-tick.

(Really. I hadn’t heard the clock today. Not at all. Awake for hours. Started reading this essay over and suddenly tick-tick-tick as my attention was flipped to look for it.)

I wonder about the atmosphere of my house at times.

My grandparents lived in a house my aunt called the mausoleum. There was no fresh air circulating in it. The paint on the walls had an even gloss coating it. Not because of the paint type, but because of how closed off it was. It could be over 90-degrees at sunset, and about an hour before lights went on the house, the half-opened windows were closed. It was sealed shut, air tight, cut off from outside.

I know people that live life of sunrise to sunset. They wake up at dawn’s first appearance, hop out of bed, and then it’s full throttle all day. When the sun disappears on the horizon, they’re moving toward their beds.

Around my house, the schedule is a bit more chaotic. We don’t eat at the same time each day. Don’t go to bed, read books, do our chores, watch television or anything else at the same time. Even the tick-tick-tick soundtrack makes appearances at different moments. And yet, still, routines.

I like to water the flowers in the deck boxes at roughly the same time each day. I have a habit of taking walks and getting some writing done at some point, or else something doesn’t quite feel right. I even hear Steve, our mailman, driving down the street, which in turn gets me in motion toward the mailbox at the end of our driveway.

Steve doesn’t arrive at the same time every day. But he has been working extra hours, and that means for six days of the week, when the mail gets delivered, it’s Steve stopping with ours. I suppose we could call that routine without schedule.

My dogs used to wake me at the same time every day. That’s not completely true, and yet it is.

It took me a bit to figure it out, but I finally realized they liked sleeping in the same basic places during the night. As such, when the first light came creeping through the mini-blinds, it would wake them up. Since it gets darker in the winter and lighter in the summer, they slept later during the winter months and woke earlier on summer days. All a reaction to a slightly changing moment in time of sunlight coming through a window at a certain angle. (Like I said, exactly same time, but not true at all.)

The hysterical part of this was that daylight savings clock changes meant absolutely nothing to them. It was the sun that moved them. Spring ahead? Now 4am is roughly 5am? They stirred an hour later. Fall back? They had their noses in my face an hour earlier.

Delightful.

Some folks base their routines on measurements of time. These days, especially with viewing options that mean even must-see television doesn’t mean must-be-in-seat timing, I don’t know if the world is so restricted.

Maybe my dogs have had it right all along. Let the clock interrupt you on occasion, but move when the world tells you and not because of the actual time.

 

If you have any comments or questions, please e-mail me at Bob@inmybackpack.com