From dust collector to family heirloom.

by Sue
(MN)

I don't even remember the day that it came into the family. My mother picked it up from a yard sale, as she does with many seemingly useless things, and then there it was – a Howard Miller Cherish Curio grandfather clock collecting dust in the basement.

A few years after this I decided that I was going to pack up and go states away to college, somewhere in Arizona, and I had to choose what I wanted to bring.

I looked over everything thinking, "oh, I can buy a new mirror there," or "I should leave my picture frames here because I don’t want them to crack."

That's when it caught my eye. I looked over to the dark wood and saw its long hand angrily ticking at me, as if raising its hand out and demanding I take it with me.

So I did. I always like to wonder what this clock has seen, you know? It's in such good condition that I can’t help but imagine that someone intensely loved it.

Maybe it was all that was left over from her father or her husband and she wiped the dust down every single day. Maybe on holidays the owner had no one, and would sit in a chair, sipping coffee, looking out the window and listening to the clock's furious reminder that the day was slowly coming to an end.

Or, maybe it had no emotional ties with anyone at all. Maybe I'm the first person that really appreciated it and that is why it was sitting at a yard sale, waiting to be whisked away.

All I’m saying is that I don't own a lot of nice things, and I don’t have anything that was a "family heirloom."

So I'm going to start one with this clock.