At 6:19 a.m., I have been looking at a blank page for fifteen minutes.  My mind is wandering to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s family.  In particular, to their clock on the mantel.  I fact check my memory and can find no Google reference to a clock that needed daily winding in Laura’s growing up years.  However, there is a Pinterest mention of a clock that Almanzo gave to his family in 1886, and it’s now on display at their historic home, Rock Ridge Farm House, in Mansfield, Missouri.  Facts around this clock are elusive. Yet my mind clings to a clock in Little House in the Big Woods. 

When I get ready in the morning, I get caught up in all the ticking between the closet and the bathroom.  There are three clocks with faces and second hands: one by the tub, one on the wall with an outdoor temperature reading, and one on a closet shelf that’s visible from the bathroom.  Time moves in this area with three asynchronous ticks marking out each second.  According to those clocks, it may be 9:03, 9:07, or 9:09.  They keep time at their own pace—even the one that is supposed to be tuned in to gather time information off of the radio waves is in a time warp.  If the minutia of minutes is important on a given day, I take my phone into the bathroom. 

The clocks fell back the last weekend in October.  The last clock in our house to fall back was the cow cuckoo clock in the office-come-Liam’s-computer room.  It’s not often seen, only heard when the little cow pops out of the doors and moos on the hour.  That clock is mounted on the wall in a space tucked between book and LEGO shelves.  A couple of weeks ago, I recruited Bill to reach up and change it, so I didn’t need to haul out my leg extension.  Great Grandma Whittier kept a step stool in plain sight in her kitchen.  I keep my two-step step ladder in a crevice next to the dryer that can only be reached by moving the trash can which is currently locked in its spot by the tub for fall decorations.  Grandma was practical in keeping her step stool at hand; I want my kitchen void of leg extensions; however, on the days I have that thing at the ready, I’m much more productive when it comes to elevated tasks. Back to clocks, via puzzles…

In the living room, Bill has a jigsaw puzzle going on the coffee table.  He loves to watch TV and work on a puzzle.  I can’t comprehend that much division in brain power.  A few weeks ago, the table sat empty for a couple of days.  Bill was debating on a switch to the 4,000+ piece unfinished Death Star LEGO set in the basement.  The LEGO craze had fizzled in our house by the time we were old enough to feel we could make this investment.  Only about a quarter of the 58 bags of LEGOS had been opened, and only the first level had been built.  The project has sat undone on a shelf in the dining room for a couple of years.  This past summer, I rooted out space in the top shelf of a cupboard in the basement and mothballed the spacecraft.  In November, Bill brought the started structure up, together with the box of pieces.  The Death Star sprung up from the puzzle table in a few days.  The finished 20” x 20”-ish Death Star needed a galaxy in which to comfortably float.  The perfect one was atop the computer hutch in the living room.  That flat surface has always been a decorating challenge.  Our living room clock sat on top of it, and every season I changed the décor around it.  I rarely hit the mark on having a lovely, seasonally staged computer hutch.  We hung the clock on the wall next to the hutch, and now the Death Star floats majestically on that surface.  I’ll never need to decorate that space again. 

With the change out of clock for Death Star, I’ve become acutely aware of how often I looked at that clock.  Now it’s an exciting new little routine for me to glance in that direction, smile and murmur “Death Star o’clock,” then adjust my sight mere inches to the clock on the wall to find the true time.  It’s a straight shot from that clock through the living room, kitchen, and mudroom to where another analog clock is in sight on the far wall of the mudroom.  So from the main kitchen thoroughfare, I have a clock at exactly 180 from my left to my right.  I just discovered that this morning.  I try to keep those two clocks closely anchored to the time on my phone, for they are ground control to Major Malcolm.

In reality, most clocks in our house are decorative, giving only a close estimate of true time.  My phone has become the current day version of what my watch was twenty years ago: accurate, dependable, and always at hand. By far my favorite clock is the one that runs truest: the tidal clock with just one hand that marks incoming and outgoing tides.  In the summer months, I hang it in the kitchen as a ready reference.  Now, it’s by the bathtub and serves as a visual cue for reliving years of summer days at the beach. 

At high tide, the hand points straight up to where a “12” would be on a time-keeping clock.  I see a narrow Wingaersheek Beach in Gloucester, most of it reclaimed by water, with footsteps sinking into soft, hot, dry sand.  The boulders that we climb lay to the right as we face the ocean; their bases are submerged in the surf.  Waves move inland intensely and with purpose: to cover land, wash out sandcastles, and flood sand that has had six hours of sun. 

At low tide, when the arm swings to where the “6” would be on a standard clock, the land widens as the water retreats, yards and yards away from dunes.  The boulders are accessible for climbing and only shallow tidal pools of warm water are left at their base.  With nets and shovels and buckets in hand, kids and adults look for clams and crabs and surprise finds, like starfish or baby sand dollars.  The wet sand packs and hardens making it easier to walk along the beach.  The waves mellow and lap at the land they are moving away from. Ripples form in the hard pack sand as little streams of water work their way back to the ocean.  A meandering line of seaweed and driftwood mark the high water mark, and they work as a kind of cage to hold small treasures—shells, mermaid purses, rocks, and other surprises—in place for beachcombers to ruffle through. 

Meanwhile large empty quahog clam shells, up to six inches wide, are heavy enough to hold tight in the surf while the sand piles around them hiding their true size.  The white humps pop like polka-dots scattered on the beach, and digging them up becomes a game with a bit of suspense in how big each of them might be.  With the unearthing of each quahog shell comes a quick pop of endorphins. 

I never know where a loose thought will take me when I start putting it down on paper.  The idea for this essay came from the comedic annoyance of three timepieces in my bathroom ticking away at different times.  I’m happy that it ended at the beach. At low tide.