No fewer than seven clocks keep time in Mom’s kitchen/dining/family room area: clocks on tables, clocks on walls, clocks on countertops, and clocks embedded in appliances.  If you count phones, the number rises to nine.  Mom seems to have adopted every sort and shape of clock, needing to give each a good home.  One never needs wonder the time.  Actually, one always must wonder what time it is, for no two clocks tell the same time. And every clock runs fast.  She sets them all ahead so that she never runs behind.  I never know if I am early or late for this or that.  To know the true time, I check my phone.  And twice each year arrives an import hour, the hour to move all seven clocks (plus the dozen in other rooms) ahead or behind one hour, on a day when she enlists me urgently to help her reset all the clocks, a vital task to be shared but not delayed or put off or procrastinated.  I fight the urge to roll my eyes at the emergency nature of the biannual ritual.  My time-turning strategy is to let the phone fix itself while I sleep.  I don’t even have a watch.

(Image by Alexa from Pixabay)