The Passage of Time
Outside on our deck on the wall of the house where there are no windows, we have placed a large 30” metal wall clock. These days, large wall clocks with a certain artistic statement are not so unusual. You can buy one on Wayfair or any manner of online shopping site and have your choice of countless styles. We actually bought this particular clock to hang over the inside front door, Our living room is about 14’ tall with a very artistic molded plaster tray around the irregularly shaped ceiling that bows out to the Northwest where the deck sits just past a set of picture windows and sliding glass doors. There is a large blank bit of wall space over the 8’ front door that seemed perfect for a wall clock. Once up on he wall, the filigree metal clock we selected didn’t feel right. The look was fine, but having a reminder of the time over the door sent a message to guests that we might just be anxious for them to leave. While that was far from the truth, it just didn’t feel right having such a stark reminder of the fleeting nature of our lives staring us in the face.
When we returned last year from Egypt, we brought with us a beautiful papyrus print of Queen Nefertari with her arms spread out with golden wings attached. Once we had it framed, it became obvious that the perfect spot for it was on that space above the door, the hints of brick red in the print picking up the color of the door. We took down the clock and are very happy with the placement of our favorite Egyptian queen. As a nod to our highly eclectic decorating style, that Egyptian print is surrounded by a large framed picture of the Anasazi cliff dwelling called The White House, which sits in the remote Arizona river valley of Canyon de Chelly, and a triptych of primitive and colorful paintings from Cabo San Lucas, Mexico that are framed in locally-mined ornate silver frames. A Moroccan filigree oval brass lamp hangs over the entry just to put a finishing touch on our truly global entry. Strangely enough, the rest of the living room is equally adorned in global fashion with a Turkish hanging platter, a small Indian mosaic table to contrast the slightly larger Jordanian mosaic “Tree of Life” table, a Jerry Anderson cowboy and Indian bronze, a Patagonian tree painting, an etagere populated with Pre-Colombian pumice figurines, antique Conquistador brass stirrups, and Inuit soapstone statuary, and an entire wall of African and Amazonian tribal masks intermingled with local SE Asian animal artifacts. We simply cannot help ourselves in bringing back reminders of our travels. Martha Stewart would be horrified.
The passage of the times of one’s life are good to remember. We enjoy having these reminders around us and using them to launch conversations when we have guests. Last night we had a couple over for dinner (Sharron & Michael) with whom we have just recently become acquainted. They live just down the hill from our little enclave and are thus somehow both a part of our community and yet just outside of it. I’m not sure we would draw such lines of demarcation, but I notice that Michael tends to refer to the difference as though we lived on a different side of the tracks, ours being the nicer of the two. In fact, the biggest difference between the two is that we are on top of the hill and thus have panoramic views and they live down the hill with more neighborhood vegetation views. We had met them when Sharron was walking the neighborhood and commented to me about our gardens, wondering if I knew the owner (I guess she thought I was the gardener). From there, she joined the Garden Club and we have noticed them regularly around the neighborhood. They are another retired couple who are about our same age. There seem to be fewer and fewer families in the community that are not at retirement age. We discussed over drinks what we had done with our lives and how we had come to live in this community. Our dinner conversation was all about how we each spend our time in retirement.
We spent the evening discussing kitchen design amidst our custom Southwestern kitchen tile mosaics (compliments of nephew Jason), sitting out on the deck staring at the ocean and basking in the warmth of a cloudless San Diego evening, and then sitting in the dining room, contemplating the setting sun. We had similar East Coast and Midwest heritage in our backgrounds, plenty of shared recollections of history, a common love of dogs, highlighted by Buddy’s antics and the common ground of gardening and doing property landscaping projects. Like all of our neighbors, Sharron and Michael had spent their lives doing various things and living in various places. Different careers, multiple marriages, configurations of children and grandchildren made for the uniqueness of their life quilts. But every one of our neighbors share two common things. We are all in love with our community and the setting in which we are privileged to live, and we are all engaged in reconnecting with nature through gardening and the beautification of our surroundings. The passage of time has whitewashed and faded the relatively trivial elements of our backgrounds and left us all with the commonality of existence and the common bond that we are all working at finding things to pass the time we have left as productively as possible.
As I sit here thinking about our discussions last night with our new friends, I notice that the filigree metal wall clock that I have placed on the outside wall on the deck is at a dead stop at 8:43. I have no clue whether that is AM or PM since I never noticed that it had stopped altogether. There is absolutely no reason to having a wall clock out on the deck, but because we own the object and it is decorative enough to not warrant being thrown in the trash, I have no intention of taking it down and declaring it without purpose. Instead, I will go remove the battery in the small clock mechanism that sits behind the center point of the disk. I will replace it with a new battery that will presumably last a few months, allowing me to glance at the outdoor clock and be reminded of the passage of time. I used to have a life countdown clock that was set when bought with a presumed death date and then counted down the amount of time you had left on earth. It was a rather strange and unpleasant reminder of the morbid reality we all operate beneath. I remember thinking that I really didn’t want to spend my life worrying about how much time I had left. Its why I try never to cross days off on a calendar. That is a similar demarcation of the passage of time.
I much prefer to live with a hope and expectation that life will go on and that the sun will rise and set forever. I am not so obtuse as to think that the ongoing passage of time requires any presumption that we will be here forever, but rather that we are part of the passage of time and that it will go on marching forward whether we are here and a part of it or not. When I put that battery in the clock, I do so knowing that one time when I do it, the clock will outlive me and that is OK. We are lucky to have this hilltop to inhabit as our venue for our ultimate passage of time. We will enjoy it along with Sharron & Michael, Mike & Melisa, Faraj & Yasuko and all out other neighbors for as long as we can.