One room in his house was full of dusty clocks. There were tall grandfather clocks and round wooden ones. Mantel clocks and small alarm clocks. There was even a cuckoo clock with a tiny brown-and-white bird. And they all were set to go off at the same time, in a cacophony of chimes, dings, bongs, and cuckoos.
The man who owned all these clocks was a grizzled old Norwegian bachelor named Sevat, and my father and I visited him frequently on Sunday mornings. While my mother sat in church, my father and I would hit the road on a red-and-white bicycle, and we’d go exploring through our small town of Decorah, Iowa. We found lots of places like Sevat’s house–full of wonder and mystery and discoveries–when I was just a little girl of five.
I turned 39 today, beginning the very last year of my 30s. When I got to work this morning, I found this message from my father:
Dear Leah,
Thirty-nine years ago this morning, I left the hospital at 4:00 A.M. and went home to shovel snow before heading to school for a full day of classes. How quickly the time has since flown! But you were daughter #1, the first with whom I shared all of those joys such as you have shared first with Ava and now with Emmett. So many games played together, and books read, so many Sunday visits to the woods during nice weather and to Sevat’s when winter came. And the Kirkebys: do you remember our occasionally going there? Mrs. Kirkeby was always so Norwegian proper, serving you cookies and milk when we came to visit.
Anyway, happy birthday. You are more in my thoughts this day than usual.
Love, Dad
My memories of those hours with my father still are so vivid. And sometimes I forget that I’m a wife and a 39-year-old mother of two because, inside, I still feel like that little five-year-old girl riding around town on the back of her dad’s bicycle.
This morning, my own five-year-old girl slipped into bed to wish me “happy birthday,” offering a glow bracelet from her treasure trove. Recently, her dad and I were sorting through her baby pictures for her Star of the Week festivities at kindergarten, and we marveled at how much she’d grown–and how much we’d already forgotten about the way she looked at each age. This got me thinking: What will she remember of these days with us, when she was small? Will she remember the way her daddy carried her up the stairs on his back and teased her with made-up names like “Ava Jean”? Will she remember her baby brother’s chubby hands on her face? Will she remember the way her mother cuddled with her in bed each night, kissing the tender nape of her neck?
My father is 75, and I am 39. Sevat is long gone now–and so are all his clocks. I can never stand in that room full of time again. But I can wake up in my bed each morning, next to the love of my life and our children. And in each passing hour with them, I can remind myself: This is the gift . . this moment ticking by us. This is the only gift that matters.