I am not a clock-watcher by nature, but I do like a house that “tick-tocks” and “bongs,” that has a heartbeat. I feel at home where household activities and conversations are punctuated with deep clangs, melodic chimes, and “cuckoos.” I rarely wear a watch, but when I do, I prefer one with a face and hands and a heart that ticks.
As a child, staying overnight with friends and relatives, I realized that every home throbbed with some version of these audible announcements of the passage of time. These metronomes of our lives provided a certain rhythm to each home. Grandfather clocks often presided over household events with a slow steady beat; for homes short of space and money, mantel clocks or bedside clocks tick-tocked reassuringly through the days and nights.
I especially loved to visit my aunt and uncle who had a cuckoo clock sitting on a small table next to the sofa.
“It’s just about time,” my aunt would call to me. I would to race to the clock, settle onto the rug in front of it and wait for what was to come.
Every hour, on the hour, a perky little bluebird would burst through the small double doors above the face of the clock and cuckoo the appropriate number of times. He would then snap back inside, slamming the doors in front of him when his mission was accomplished. I adored that little bird, but it was the total performance that mesmerized me. Just before the bird’s visitation, two sets of doors opened onto a small landing which was the base of the clock. A miniature Tyrolean maid and lad would rotate slowly to the front, pause and wait (like me) for the bird’s brief performance. Following the closure of the bird’s doors, they would, as though reluctantly, slowly rotate back through their own doors, which promptly closed behind them.
Even now I view such whimsical clocks as sincere tributes to our gift of time—a joyous celebration of the hour just past, as well as anticipation of the arrival of the new.
I also enjoy the pompous clocks that mimic the great cathedrals and clock towers of the world. I have a grandfather clock that magnanimously gives me a choice of St. Michael chimes, Winchester Cathedral chimes, Whittington chimes of the church of St. Mary LeBow, or Westminster chimes from the bell tower on Westminster Abbey in London. How presumptuous to echo such famous chimes—and yet somehow appropriate, too. After all, the seconds, minutes, and hours are precious to us all—none more worthy than the other to receive them.
While the proud grandfather clock holds a prominent position in my home’s entryway, the true matriarch presides over the house from the living room. She is a grandmother clock who has been the keeper of time and tempo for three generations of our family. Age has mellowed the hardwoods that encase her chimes, thus her voice is sweet and clear. Like an omniscient piano teacher she counts out the measures of our time. The steady beat is reassuring, a rhythmic reminder that there is a fullness of time that cannot be hurried.
I do not trust a clock without a face and hands, that neither ticks nor chimes, that has no soul. I am comfortable entrusting the new year to my elderly time-keepers, my old friends who are not reluctant to remind me of the passing of time, who call me from my daily chores to celebrate the coming and going of the hours of the day, who measure the immeasurable with music.
The old mantel clock on the buffet has just joined the clock chorus with its melodic bongs, reminding me that it is time to put aside the day and retire for the night. I think I will heed its call. As the members of my family have done for the past 100 years, I have trusted it to count the measures of my day and I will trust it with my night. Like the watchmen of the past it seems to call out to those who listen, “It’s 10 o’clock and all is well.”