Time Rolls On?

I was at my kitchen sink yesterday, washing a handful of cherry tomatoes I’d just picked from my garden when I heard a huge crash from upstairs. I turned around to see a giant object pounding itself down the front hall stairs, rolling end over end, until it slammed onto the hardwood foyer floor and crashed into the front door with a crescendo of shattered glass.

Maybe it took 5 seconds for the whole thing to unfold. It felt like 5 minutes. Like I was watching a movie. I was calm, detached: What is that? I hope it’s not denting the hardwood. I’ll be picking up glass for a year. I don’t want to clean up the mess. I’ll be late, now.

It was my wall clock. A 3-foot diameter, circular antique reproduction that looked like it was from a Paris flea market. It was made of weathered, espresso-colored pressed wood with cream-colored Roman numerals and clock hands. It was encased in thick glass. It weighed about 50 pounds. It had been hanging on the wall halfway between the upstairs and downstairs; halfway between the second-floor ceiling and the stair trim; halfway between the downstairs hall ceiling and the upstairs windows. It was kind of spectacular, suspended in the middle of a lot of things. I used to love it. Everyone loved it. Seeing it shattered in pieces on the floor, I didn’t feel love. I felt weary of cleaning up messes.

The whole event was too weird to ignore in an existential way. Too perfectly timed. One minute difference either way and I could have still been outside picking tomatoes or in my car on the way to an author event I was now sure I’d be late for. But I witnessed the whole thing. WHAT DOES IT MEAN? Time rolls on?

I took a photo of the wreckage and texted it to a friend. He texted back, “Lucky you don’t believe in signs…” (which of course, I do). “Your time would be up.” Ha, ha.

Well, if it was up, what could I do about that? Seemed way too obvious. Stupid even, as a sign from the Universe. I got my red broom and started planning the clean-up. I reminded myself that I didn’t want to try out the emergency room in my new city so to be mindful of the sharp edges. The edges. What was around the edges? I began to pick up huge pieces of glass and smaller ones. I didn’t care about those pieces. It was the endless miniscule shards, almost like sand, that I hated. Those never seemed to be fully gone. Months later, the painful shock of stepping on the tiniest remnant would remind me of the event. I’d spend useless time trying to fish the invisible shard out of a tender toe or bleeding heal—never quite sure if I’d gotten it out.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN? Sweeping, I remembered I’d already stopped the clock from keeping time. It ticked too loud. I took out the batteries 5 years ago and it had been stalled at 2 o’clock ever since. I was aware I never bothered to change the clock hands—in fact, I rarely looked at the clock. It was there, taking up huge space, the proverbial elephant in the room, unnoticed, until someone said, “I love that clock.” Then I’d remember that I loved it, too. For a second.

What was hanging in my face that I wasn’t not paying attention to? WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

I remembered that I bought the clock during my divorce more than 10 years ago. I remembered hanging it in my new apartment on the exposed brick wall in the kitchen. I remember loving it. A huge clock full of time. It had hung on the wall in 2 apartments and now my house. Now it was gone.

Broken glass gone, I picked up the pieces of the clock. Could it be repaired? I guess it could be. It would be expensive to replace the glass. The wood frame would always show the crack line in two places. I stared. It wasn’t’ worth it to me. I realized I didn’t love that clock anymore. I was done with it.

I was done with something else. The smashed circle of time slammed a reality into my consciousness: the past is complete. Done. Over. Not just my divorce, and my 35 years of life-lived in Boston; not just the nine years of dating and failed relationships and trying to figure out what a healthy one looked like; not just the long, dark struggle to triumph over a childhood of unspeakable trauma; not just the long list of accomplishments I’d demeaned for decades; not just raising my son with a love and dedication I’d never been offered; not just struggling with my own value as woman and mother and human being on this planet. That 5-second, in-my-face crash of time has shattered the halfway-world I have been holding onto—being stalled in that split second place between having propelled yourself off a cliff and your toes not yet leaving the ground. That place. That’s what is shattered.

My story finally belongs to me. It’s not tempered by my own terror of what I survived or the fear of disconnection from a family of origin that was never a family. My story is no longer a monster under my bed or the mirror of who I am or a trophy to hold up and say I won. It is a beautiful, tragic, triumphant gift. It is mine. It might be the only thing in the world that truly belongs to me. No one can tell me what to do with it or how to tell the tale. Yesterday, time shattered—the time between what was and what is. My toes have left the ground. I am released. And finally free.