A Treasure of Time

In the famous lyric to “September Song” by Maxwell Anderson “the days dwindle down to a precious few,” but the wonderful thing is that, when time grows short, you have more of it.  I was thinking of this on a lazy summer afternoon as I sat on the sun porch of my Mayflower Street home reading a book.

 

Perhaps you might say it was I who was lazy and not the afternoon, and indeed somewhere there were people rushing about getting things done. I’m fond of idleness; I confess it.  I remember the Fridays of my childhood when my grandmother would take me to her home in Hanover.  On Saturday I would be perfectly free to do anything I wished. 

My grandfather was a jeweler, a watchmaker, and a repairer of clocks.  He had a workroom where the walls were filled with scores of windup clocks and the sound of them all tick-tocking together was music I’ll never forget.  When the top of the hour arrived one would strike and the others chime in with a cacophony of dings and bongs. It was an event worth waiting for.  

Time was mine to use, and use it I did.  I would range the woods with Timmy, my Grandfather’s beagle who would give voice as he followed the scent of a rabbit.  I could see the use of a beagle in hunting because often the rabbit would appear close by, interested only in the rushing about of the ecstatic dog.  Had I been armed, it would have been an easy shot.

But the rabbits were safe. To my Grandfather’s great disappointment, Timmy was gun shy.  Grandpa tried to get him used to the sound by firing a cap pistol whenever he gave Timmy his food, but it only made the dog dissolve into a quivering mass whenever he saw a child with a toy gun.  Timmy never caught a rabbit, and for all his woodland yodeling, was as useless as I. 

And I was completely without worth.  I opened drawers full of interesting old tools, made swords out of scrap wood for the fighting of pirates, and watched “Space Patrol” on the snowy black and white TV.  Besides the house there was a great barn to explore. 

On Sunday, my mother and father would arrive, visit for a while, and fetch me home where my homework would be in my room where I left it. I would hear the sound of Ed Sullivan as I forlornly labored. 

Now I’m useless once again.  Like my grandfather’s workshop, the sun porch was a room full of time.  My book was non-fiction, but nothing that was liable to improve my mind.  Say what you will you achievers, you rushers-about, idleness is sweet.  The slower you go the slower is the movement of time.  You can look out the screened window at the sunlight on the moving leaves.  I know my time won’t last forever, but what I have isn’t being wasted – not wasted at all.