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| The Dow clock in 2012, before its facelift. |
That was in 1995, and I haven’t worn a watch since. My
innate need to be always on time has remained (sometimes aggravatingly) intact,
which is, perhaps, unsurprising considering the sheer number of clocks in the
world. My phone serves as alarm clock, stopwatch, and timer. My car has a
clock, as do the kitchen stove, the microwave, the DVD player, and my computer
screen.
Surrounded by the bright, blocky numbers of digital clocks,
I prefer old fashioned timepieces, which contain much more character – and, perhaps
ironically, a sense of timelessness. We are lucky in Franconia to have one of
these in the center of town, smack dab between Main Street and the mountains
that define our southern horizon. The clock on the former Dow Academy building,
which has told time for the community since 1903, has recently resumed its
chiming after a hiatus of a couple of years. When the wind is drifting the
right way, I can hear the old clock bell tolling even at my home, two miles
away.
The resonating clang reaches me while I am at my desk or in
the yard, sometimes causing me to pause and consider what needs to be done at
this hour. On summer nights the echoed chiming floats with the breeze through the open
window as I read, serving as a not entirely welcome reminder that it’s time to put
the book down and turn off the light. In the early mornings, when I linger in
half-sleep, the clock’s bell mingles with the distant fluting of the wood thrush
from the edge of the forest, the singsong conversations of robins in the yard,
and the relentlessly repeated cackle-call of some bird I have not yet
identified.
Hearing the ringing of the Dow clock again has made me
realize that I missed its sound in the silent interval while the clock was
being repaired and restored.
When my children were very young, we made regular forays to
the playground in Franconia, where the clock tower stands like a stalwart
friend above the swing set and twisting green slides. I became used to marking
the time with an upward glance at the clock. How long until lunch? Or naptime?
Or a meeting with friends?
Now the children play t-ball and baseball and soccer on the
adjacent fields, and I had missed the convenience of telling the time from the
large hands and Roman numerals of the Dow clock. I’m happy now for both the
return of that convenience and the tolling of each hour, which is somehow
reassuring: time marches on, no matter the weather, the activity, the day’s
challenges.
When I wore a watch – a habit I picked up when Swatch
watches were all the rage and continued until that fateful day in the west of
Ireland – I looked at it often, especially if I was running late. The closer I
was to the time I was supposed to be somewhere, the shorter the interval
between glances. It was maddening.
My son, who is 8, has inherited this need to be on time.
Actually, we both prefer to be five minutes early whenever possible. On school
days, he looks often at the digital clock over the stove in the kitchen,
counting down the minutes until we have to leave the house, impatiently imploring
his sisters to finish breakfast and reminding me how much time I have to
complete the morning chores. In the car, on the way to games or appointments or
dates with friends, he watches the clock, remembering to subtract four minutes from
the time displayed because that clock runs fast.
It’s probably a good thing, then, that it was not my time-fixated
son, but his twin sister who received a watch as a gift from their grandmother
this summer.
It is this child of mine, the one who is much less concerned
about what time it is and hardly ever considers the potential ramifications of
being late, who has become our family’s official teller of time lately. Her
watch is purple and pink and green, its band bedecked with daisies, the analog
numbers multi-colored, and the seconds marked by the ticking of a flower.
Telling time is a skill my daughter is still developing. Sometimes
when I ask her what time it is, she gives me an answer that is so far off I can
tell she has mixed up the minute and hour hands, or become distracted by that
ticking flower. Other times she is spot on.
Either way, after so many watch-less years, I’ve developed a
pretty good sense of what time it is. I know we’ll get to wherever we’re going when
we get there. Still, I often can’t help racing the clock, even if it’s no
longer on my wrist. Chances are, wherever we’re going, we’ll be early.
Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the July 10, 2015 edition of the Littleton Record.
