Time Is Money

 The clock was a gift. My father built it from a kit and presented it to my new wife and me on the advent of our nuptials. It was a replica of the old Regulator clock that hung on the wall at my parents' house at the top of the stairs. The sonorous ticking and the chiming on the half hour became part of our new household sounds. 

When we moved into our new house, the clock was one of the first items to find a spot: On the living room wall, across from our bedroom door where it became the heartbeat of our home. 

Periodically we would have a guest spend the night on the couch and they would inquire as to the possibility of stifling the tick-tocking and the ding-donging. With the pendulum stilled, the night could pass without all that racket. 

Then, after decades of being lulled to sleep ourselves by the tick-tocking and ding-donging, I went to make my weekly wind of the springs to keep things running. 

And it stopped. Something inside gave up. All those years, hours, minutes, and suddenly the clock stopped. The gift from my father who art in heaven had given up the ghost. This was in December of 2024. After some discussion and research, my wife and son carefully removed the clock from the wall and took it to the repairman we found on Al Gore's Internet. 

Days turned into weeks. Weeks turned into months. Updates were few and far between. At one point my wife informed me that the gentleman who was working on our family heirloom had suffered a heart attack. More months passed. My wife went off to Europe on vacation. Three more weeks passed, and when she returned she told me the news: The clock was ready.

We showed up on Saturday afternoon, checkbook in hand. No worries, we were told, we could pay with a card. We did. A lot. It wasn't a question about whether or not we would pay it. It was part of the family. Our heartbeat. our soundtrack, our timepiece. It wasn't a question of the money. 

It was a matter of time.