Time

This morning when I stepped outside to put the bills into the mailbox, I heard the most extraordinary sound:  spring. There were birds, different kinds, calling to each other, and in some far away tree I heard a song sparrow singing . I stood out in the cold February sunshine for a long while, just listening.  

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Last night I watched a nature program about Madagascar, and learned about an animal called a streaked tenrec that looks like a hedgehog and a shrew. They have the largest litters of any mammal: up to thirty-two babies. The babies and mother stay together, and the whole family forages the forest floor looking for insects to eat. Nature has given them quills, camouflage, pointed noses, and sharp instincts to make them successful in their habitat.  Nature has given us large brains. So we can figure it out. Some days I would rather have the camouflage.

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I started writing a little story yesterday.  For fun.  I was thinking about clocks, and what would happen if....
The concept of time has fascinated me since I was a child.  Some people say that it doesn't exist; it is only a human construct (the effect of our large brains). Yet, the sun rises and sets and the seasons change making life a temporal experience.  Have you ever thought about how most of what you call your life is really just memory?  The only life anyone really has is the present moment, which is gone as soon as you think of it.

Would you like to see how the story begins?

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At twelve thirty-three each night the clock in the hall stops ticking for exactly two minutes. Every third day my mother stands on the stepstool and resets the time, turning the minute hand forward six clicks for the lost minutes.  When I was little this confused me, “Where are they?” I would ask.  

“Where are what?” said my mother.

“The lost minutes.”

“Gone,” my mother would say with  a sad smile. 

I knew she was wrong.  They weren’t gone, they were somewhere.

The clock belonged to my father’s great grandfather who was a country doctor in Russia during The Great War.  He received it from a noblewoman as payment for saving her dying child from diphtheria.  My father calls it the “family treasure”.  My mother hates it.   I think it might be magic.