Updated: Jan 26
I have a very enjoyable hobby
I collect and fix watches
I am not good enough at it to fix other people’s watches
(Oh, how I would hate to ruin an heirloom!).
I have the tiny watch tools and magnifying loupe.
And it is relaxing--- timeless, really.
What makes it tick?
What makes us tick?
I think that the two are related
If one gear doesn’t work with another.
The watch won’t work.
And we both need to keep ticking.
I lose track of time while working on time.
So I collect them and fix them,
Including the old ruined ones that sat for decades in my Dad’s drawer.
Some are quality mechanical watches
Others are cheap ones that just require a new battery.
It struck me one day that perhaps my fascination with watches and clocks
Is at some level an attempt to set aside a treasury of time.
Knowing that we all have so little of it.
For example, my Dad is gone some years
But I got his watches to run again
Even the one he had when he was a little boy
Some eighty years ago.,
So, in a very quiet way
He entered into my time.
This has made me very careful to
Wind the mechanical watches every morning
Because I haven’t got enough time to lose a second.
Somehow, I think that it buys me time.
Time is for us what water is to fish
We swim in it
Our whole lives are spent in it
It wouldn’t occur to a fish to resent water
So, we can’t really resent time
We live in it, love in it, die in it
Build lives around it
And organize our memories to it.
And when we leave it
Our time is up
When my time is up,
A new battery won’t help
But I am always full of joy
To think that future hands will wind
At least one of my pocket watches.
Maybe the one with my wife’s picture. And so the watch becomes a real timepiece
It is a piece of time across time.
But I will live just a little bit
After I am gone
When new hands wind this watch.