Opinion
Time Won’t Let Me Wait That Long
An encounter at a clock-repair shop offered a lesson about life in 2020.
By Jennifer Finney Boylan
Contributing Opinion Writer
Dec. 9, 2020
A long time ago — 100 years, give or take — a farmer dropped his pocket watch in a field in Missouri.
Many years after that, a boy was tilling the field with a horse-drawn plow. He saw something shiny in the dirt and stopped to pick it up. “Hey,” he said to his father. “What’s this?”
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I’m driving my Jeep on a bridge across the Kennebec River on a December late afternoon, headed toward a clock-repair store in South China, Maine. I left my grandmother’s mantel clock at the shop nearly two months ago.
Back then, the trees were orange and red. The ditches were filled with yard signs: Biden, Trump, Gideon, Collins, Golden. Now the trees are bare, and the yard signs are almost gone. A few large Trump signs and flags remain, though, as if to send the message: This is still not over. This will never be over.
Back on March 13, I’d arrived home after Barnard College (where I teach in the spring) went remote. Four other members of the family landed at our house then, too, to hole up for the duration. It was a hard time. Eventually one of our family members wound up in the psych ward of our hospital, suffering from anxiety and despair.
Two days after I arrived home, my grandmother’s old clock stopped dead. Nothing could get it going again.
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The boy who found the watch in the field kept it for 70 years. It was 14-karat gold and had a cover released by a crown. But it never ran, having been ruined by its time lying in the field.
That boy’s name was Ralph. Finally, as an old man, he brought the watch to a clock shop in Gresham, Ore. Errol and Michelle Stewart, who ran the shop, said it would be hard to fix. But they’d give it a go.
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A garage band called the Outsiders is playing on the oldies station as I drive. “I can’t wait forever,” they sing. “Time won’t let me wait that long.”
As I head toward the clock shop, I am thinking about the things we have lost this year: over a quarter of a million dead in this country, lives upended and destroyed. And the small things too: the closeness of friends, a pint in a pub, a stranger’s handshake.
I think about some of the people who’ve died. John Prine, our national treasure. Who sang, “When I get to heaven, I’m going to shake God’s hand. And thank him for more blessings than one man can stand.”
And Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the justices who ruled five years ago that my marriage was legal. And who joined the majority just this summer in ruling that I cannot be fired from my job simply because of who I am.
On Nov. 20, the Transgender Day of Remembrance, we lost Jan Morris, the great Welsh travel writer and memoirist, at the age of 94. Her 1974 book “Conundrum” was the first time I ever read about a trans person like me. When I read that book as a teenager, for the first time I thought, I could be a person in the world if I was as brave as Jan Morris. But I did not think I was.
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The Stewarts now live in a Maine farmhouse not too far from China Lake, with a big barn as well as a small outbuilding where the clocks get fixed. Inside the clock shed it is bright and warm, and there are tools and drills and a half-dozen clocks in various stages of repair. And there on the workbench is my grandmother’s Ansonia clock, all fixed and shined up. “It’s a beautiful old thing,” Michelle says. “It just needed a little love.” Her husband, Errol, comes in and for a while we stand around in our masks, talking about all the ways humans measure the passage of time.
The old clock chimes. I remember that sound from my grandmother’s apartment, back when I went to visit her after school. She used to make me frozen pizza. Later, after a certain number of martinis, she’d always ask, “Have I ever told you the story of the night your father was conceived?”
Yes, I’d tell her. You’ve told me. Many, many, many times.
The Ansonia clock tolled softly beside her. My grandmother lit up a cigarette. Then, with a happy smile, she’d tell me the story again.
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This is my last column of 2020, the year time froze. Now, like George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” I’m ready to live again. Get me back, Clarence. Get me back.
But the world is not quite ready to unfreeze. This — as those Trump signs keep reminding me — is still not over.
My daughter was home for Thanksgiving. On the night before she left, we all fell to singing songs. The last tune my child sang that night was “The Parting Glass.” “So fill to me the parting glass, and drink a health what’ere befalls; I’ll gently rise and softly call. Good night and joy be with you all.”
There were a few tears. I still remember the day she was born, in 1994. How long ago that feels. Just like it happened yesterday.
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It was Errol who told me the story of the boy who found the watch in the field. He and Michelle worked on that pocket watch for a long time.
Then one day, they placed the watch in his hand. It was ticking. Ralph had never heard it tick before.
He was in his 80s now. He pressed the crown, and the watch opened. It had been broken, but now it was restored.
The old man began to leap around the workshop. “Look at it run!” he cried. The second hand swept around the dial. “Look at it run! Oh, look at it run!”
Jennifer Finney Boylan, a contributing opinion writer, is a professor of English at Barnard College. Her most recent book is “Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs.” Her Op-Ed essays publish on alternate Wednesdays. You can follow her on Twitter: @JennyBoylan
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