The Trouble With Time

My trouble with time has nothing to do with the elder kind but more with the physical matter of it. I seem to have adopted a number of old clocks and they have their moods, just as people do. The one I call Grandfather, because he is the eldest, is the clock that demands the most attention. It isn't because he is two hundred years old, it's mainly because he has his quirks. If I make a move, first of all, he costs a lot because only certain movers will do it and second of all, he just makes up his mind to stop and then I must call someone in to set him right again. He's seven feet tall which makes him somewhat imposing to begin with, and he's a bit cranky in his case with a few scratches and scrapes and missing top brass globe and two brass filials. But then, at his age, you have to make concessions. I am sure the trip over the Atlantic Ocean was one of his least favorite things to be forced to do. The relatives were becoming scarce in the Mother Land and when it became clear that we here in the "colonies" needed to be his last residence, he was crated up and sent off to Canada's west coast. After spending  a deal of time on boats and trains and trucks to get here, he objected, I suppose, and in a snit, would not start up. The man of the house, whose genetic background included Grandfather, took him all apart, thus rendering the dining room table unusable for over two months. Grandfather standing in the room silently the whole time, allowed himself to be tenderly put  back together. Seeing our lives day by day, whether it was his progeny's gentle touch or simply the sea air that restored him, he began to tick once again. His ticks, depending on where in the case, his pendulum is situated, make them faster or slower. He is set for one tick to one second. That was almost fifty years ago and although the man who fixed him is no longer here, not a day has gone by without Grandfather's comforting voice under our roof. He needs winding weekly to bring the heavy lead (a Leadbeater clock) weights back up the long case on their gut strings to the top, before beginning their tick-by-tick journey back down. The gut is as old as the clock, and will not be replaced until Grandfather insists. During the fifty years in our company he's had his times-off when we went away for longer than usual vacations or we moved to other homes. He's heard our celebrations and up and down times, and the usual grievings and joys and worries that families have. Many times when there was no convenient spot available, he seemed to offer us a generous space inside his case. Over the years, we've hung carpentry tools inside, bored holes in his back to hold him up in case of earthquake, stored potato chip bags in him and toilet paper rolls and cereal boxes. He has accepted them all. He is very old now. His moon at the top of his face isn't always in the phase it's supposed to be, nor does his marking of the days find themselves always matching the calendar every month, but we help him along. I don't polish him as vigorously as I once did, because little bits of his ornate veneers began to loosen and become lost. His clanging bell has been dulled because it used to scare babies and old ladies and condo dwellers, but it's still charming even though its bell is dulled with a swatch of cotton. If you look at the mechanical workings, you'd think they were just a comical assortment of  ugly rough iron bits, not the shiny bright pretty etched things of your modern "grandfather clocks". Grandfather is not a clock that people ooh and aah over.  Grandfather is a practical sort, conceived in mahogany veneers in Mr. Leadbeater's shop in Cheshire, a long time ago. I hope Grandfather continues long after I have gone. I would like my followers to know his soothing, deep tick, second by second for hour after hour, day by day and year by year, all of their lives.