tick tock, tick tock, tick tock….

tick-tock (dictionary.com)

noun: A clock; also, by extension, the human heart

The sound of a clock ticking drew my attention to the TV. I was thrown back to another ‘time’. I landed in Pop and Mom Johnson’s living room. The clock ticked and tocked throughout my childhood. A sound that was soothing, relaxing. A sound that was so familiar that I do nothing else but remember.

When I was a child, clocks were a part of the sounds in a household. They chimed, they tick tocked, they played music and sometimes they mesmerized a little girl as she watched the gold pendulum swing back and forth. Mantel clocks, pocket watches, huge wall clocks that hung in banks and other city buildings. In some homes, Cuckoo clocks announced the hour. Small figures danced around the bottom of those same clocks.

I remember walking into a jewelry store and hearing the clocks on the walls playing tick tock tunes so randomly that one could get lost in the chaos. Yet when the hour arrived, they played in unison. Some clocks were part of bronze sculptures, while others were merely clock faces with no adornments.

Then came digital. Hm. The numbers glowed and the tick tocking ceased. The lovely wall clock was obsolete and the mantel clock became an antique. The grandfather clock seamed incongruous with modern interiors. Clocks were seen less in businesses, probably in hopes that customers would shop longer if not watching a clock. Indeed employees would work harder. Now the clock resides in our phones. More arms are free of watches and the tick tocks I listened to on Daddy’s watch are now silent.

I have a mantle clock that doesn’t work, but it reminds me of another time and of other people. The large key that opens it is a treasure in itself. It holds a history of other hands winding the gears, keeping time on time. An action that began the tick tocking for another day. An action that probably was accompanied by putting out the lights, checking the children and saying good night.

For those of us who are older, we have memories of places and of people stirred by the sound of one of those old clocks. Today that ticking and tocking took me back to the farm on Yount Road. A trip home to visit my grandparents once more. A sound of a clock…and the beating of the human heart.