Grandpa's Clock

When dad passed in November of 1998 I inherited his Elgin Grandfather wall clock. It’s been with me ever since. I’m at my desk in the back bedroom writing in my journal when I hear its iconic Westminster chime announcing 10:00 AM. I glance to the lower right of my laptop screen and see it’s actually 9:57 AM Stratum 1 NTP satellite time in Renton, Washington. So Grandpa’s Clock is running about three minutes fast.

From where I sit looking down the hallway I can see the pendulum swinging back and forth. It hangs on the wall between the sliding glass door to the deck on the left and the bay window to the right in the living room. I’ve known this old clock since the early 1970s. It was an inexpensive pseudo antique of sorts but today I realize it's a real antique and over 50 years old. It was gifted to dad from his dear friend Krista when they both worked at Cavallini's Restaurant in Cle Elum, Washington. It runs ever so slightly fast and gains about three minutes a year.  

Grandpa's Clock

This has me thinking about time. Both of my laptops, my iPhone, TV, and stereo all sink to satellite time via the internet and automatically adjust to Pacific Standard or Daylight Savings time. My stove, microwave, 2007 Ford Explorer, and this old clock do not. I imagine for a moment that I live in a kind of multiverse of time streams within the walls of my little condo. One is based on satellites the other on Grandpa’s Clock. Einstein once said in his 1905 Special Theory of Relativity that time isn’t an absolute and it can’t be observed by itself. An event simultaneous with another in one frame of reference may be in the past or the future of that same event depending on your frame of reference. 

I'm enjoying these thoughts today like a good metaphor for life. I’ve read about cyclical time, timeless time, and that time is just an artifact of the mind, like a Buddhist monk letting go of attachments. Grandpa’s Clock ignores the digitally synchronized world. It simply persists to ticktock that four note passage from Handel's Messiah that "I know that my redeemer liveth" at its very own analog quartz crystal pace. After all, it's dutifully swung that little pendulum and chimed Westminster for over 50 years, on the hour, every hour, even during power failures.

Now midway into my seventies I think I want to be more like Grandpa’s Clock. I want to keep to my own kind of internal quartz crystal time. I really don’t need to be in sync anymore. I’m wonderfully irrelevant now by choice so therefore free. I just need to do what I can, as I can, and to keep my batteries charged. After all, I’m Grandpa, in fact I’m Great Grandpa too.