Chiming in

On one or another mantle in the three houses I lived in with my parents, stood a wooden clock. At the hour, the clock chimed the time; at the half hour, one chime would ring. It's a sweet sound, that chime, full and yet light, round and brief. I do not know where the clock came from, whether it was a gift to my parents, or from one parent to another, or something they purchased on their own. It's been in our lives though for as far back as I can recall. Growing up, I was soothed by its sound down the hall or downstairs on the nights I'd wake up in the middle of the night. When I'd return home for weekends when in college, it was the comforting sound that would help me fall asleep.

The clock now sits in my house. Last night when I turned the lights out in the living room and started upstairs to bed, it chimed nine times. I stopped on the stairway and purposefully listened to the sounds. And I smiled a bittersweet smile.

Of all the furniture, prints, silverware, books and other cherished items that have been moved from my parents home to my own, that wooden clock and its wonderful sound is the one thing above all that I'm happiest to have in my life. It takes brings the present back, and brings the past forward. It is the sound of home, no matter where the house or who is in it.