Grandfather Clock

When I was a kid (deja vu! another recent post started like this, too!) our house was unthinkably small.  The wall where our grandfather clock stood was the same wall that my bed was against.  At night when I couldn’t sleep – because insomnia for me started in infancy – I would listen to it tock-tock-tock and wait for it to chime every 15 minutes.  It was the kind that played a longer chime every 15 minutes until it let loose with crazed, loud bonging for the number of hours.

Recently we inherited a similar type of clock from my husband’s grandparents.  It just occurred to me tonight that this clock, which is new to us, has made me feel more at home than anything else here.  I love it more than I love my house (which is saying a lot).  It stirs up all kinds of happy feelings.

When hubband was showing me how to unlock it to reset the weights, I remembered my dad doing this, just the same way.  Except hubband made them all even at the top and my dad purposely put them at differently heights, to be more artistic or aesthetic or something.  At various times in my life I’ve gone from not liking him, to wanting to put a fork through his left eyeball, to gradually learning how to sit in the same room with him and not go crazy, to loving him as my dad and a friend, not just in spite of but also because of all the crazy things he is.  And I also love how much I am both like him and not like him at all, at the same time.

So hubband will have to keep the clock set.  This was a form of magic when I was a kid, that my dad could reach that key (and hubband instinctively put it in just the right spot, too) and I couldn’t reach it.  I’m sure I could reach the key now, but I don’t want to try.  It might ruin the magic if I did it myself.

My old man turned 55 yesterday!  Happy Birthday, Dad.  Stick around for a long while, okay?