|
Think of a sound, my writing teacher says. Go wherever it takes you. Write for 20 minutes. There is no wrong way to do it.
I write about Mrs. Timmons’ house. Mrs. Timmons lived next door to my childhood home. Her family room was filled with clocks. A grandfather clock stood guard over the smaller timepieces that covered the walls. Their pendulums swayed back and forth. Ticking. Whirring. The room was alive.
The clocks counted time like a purring cat or a heartbeat, regulating the body. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Breathe.
Behind Mrs. Timmons’ house was a yard of green grass that led to stone stairs, lined with manicured hedges, that followed the slope of the earth until the measured steps and ordered beds met the leafy trails of a wooded ravine. It was here that I looked for tadpoles and wondered about a falling-down wall of bricks that stood, forgotten, near the edge of the stream that wound around trees whose branches stretched like arms toward the sky.
I loved the freedom of the ravine but took refuge on the steps, a liminal space between Mrs. Timmons’ suburban yard and the wildness of nature, between the world of grown-ups and the woods where I understood God. Like the room full of ticking clocks with weights and hands and painted faces of moons smiling behind glass, the outdoor steps were a space where magic could happen. An in-between place. A pause.
As I await a new season that will bring graduations and goodbyes and the packing of bags, I want to know what comes next. I want to stop time. In this in-between space where all things are possible, I think of the clocks. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Breathe.
| 
