Dancing in celebration for each chime.

by Sarah H.
(Seattle)

My mother likes antiques and traditional furniture that can be passed from generation to generation. She is an antique finder, purchaser, and an avid collector. Clocks are one of her favorite items to collect. She has table top clocks, wall clocks and her all-time favorite clock the grandfather clock.

For years she lived in small cramped houses and could not display her favorite things for everyone.

About five years ago she married a nice retired gentleman and they moved into the house of their dreams. It has all the required amenities.

There is enough room for the entire family to get together for family dinners and holidays. There is room for both of their many collections.

Enough room to have a grandfather clock and high enough ceilings to allow the clock to reach its true potential. She has a Howard Miller Johnathan Grandfather clock.

For a while she would deliberately make the grandfather clock ten minutes fast so that it would be the only clock chiming the hour. No matter how often we tried to correct this it was met with resistance.

Grandfather clocks are her favorite types of clocks and she will wait until the grandkids get to her house before she pulls the weights.

The little ones will gather around and she will show them how to open the door and which weights to pull and explain how important it is to be careful.

Then she will lift them up to look at the clock face and see all of the gears. The first few times the clock chimes after that is a cause for celebration with the grandkids.

It is quite a site to see the kids and my mom freeze for the first chime and then dance in celebration for each additional one.

The kids always want another chime so if we are leaving and it is close to the top of the hour we are required to hang out for “just one more”.