THE TICKING OF TIME

I have a small bedside travel alarm that ever so softly goes tick, tick, tick, tick. Each tick soft and distinct and separated by a slight pause. On the far side of the room there hangs an eight day coo coo clock. It cannot go a whole eight days because the ceiling is not high enough for the weights to be able to drop eight days worth. But that's okay, it goes for five days before I need to pull up the weights. This clock generally goes TOCK, TICK. I know this sounds strange and I have concentrated on hearing TICK, TOCK but it just isn't. It is a very definite TOCK, TICK.

In the wee smalls of this morning, however, when I awakened to a quiet, restful peace, and lay awake listening for the hour to strike, there was a different rhythm. Now, my sister has a coo coo that is only a twelve hour coo coo. The tick of this coo coo sounds to me as a frantic ticktickticktickticktick with no pauses in between at all. The grandfather clock at my sisters keeps time with a rich and regal TICK pause TOCK pause TICK pause TOCK etc. This aside is to illustrate that I am well aware of a lot of different ticking sounds and rhythms.

So in this morning's wee smalls as I listened, I heard -- TICKity, TOCK, TICKity, TOCK, TICKity, TOCK. Very strange. I listened for quite a while and it did not change. Four o'clock came and went as did the half hour, and then five. I decided that I had been in bed for long enough and just got up, showered, had oatmeal and coffee and am on with my day.

Any why does all this ticking seem important to me today? Could be because it is my seventy second birthday and I am all too aware of the ticking of time. Which, by the way, seems to be passing me by faster and faster all the time.

AND -- Advent begins tomorrow. Didn't we just do that? Obviously not. And so .... on into Advent ...

THE GIFT OF FAMILY

It's a big one this year, you know. Seventy. And it's Thanksgiving so we can make the time.

And so they did. My Connecticut son, my Pennsylvania son and his wife, their three sons and one daughter. My sons in their forties. Children ranging from nine to nineteen. And me, turning seventy. And my spouse not yet seventy.

We all spent a joyful Thanksgiving dinner with all the step children acquainting and Reacquainting themselves to one another, and all the cousins and step cousins running amok and generally enjoying the day. It was the treat of a lifetime -- all of us together -- laughing, remembering past events, telling of new happenings, learning who did what and when. What a gift!

Back at "Mom's" house we tended to congregate around the dining room table; the generations gathered to read, compute, play board games, crosswords, Sudoku, or just chat. There was no one taking off for work, or the mall, or to pal around with friends, or whatever young people do these days. They could have, actually, gone out for a walk or found solitude in another room of the house. But they chose to gather together. What a gift!

The sibling banter was brutally honest, accepted as such and responded to in kind. It was wonderful to hear this give and take among them. There was acceptance for who/what each one was and love for one another all the way round inter and intra generational. What a gift!

Midday on Saturday we all came to table together for the celebratory and farewell meal. Cards and gifts were received. And then the question: "Grandmom, have you accomplished all that you wanted to accomplish?" Great long pause while I mulled that one over, but the reply was obviously -- NO! We can never be done. There is always more to learn and accomplish. I'm not done yet. Maybe they will ask the question again at my eightieth gathering and hopefully the answer will still be the same.

The joy of family -- What a GIFT!