tick tock...
On the wall of my old bedroom in my grandmother’s house is a clock. It’s fancy, the kind with a pendulum. There’s a little door just below the face, and inside that splintery darkness is a tiny hook screwed into the wood of the back, and a world of possibilities.
I was, perhaps, six years old, standing on tiptoe and hoping I wouldn’t get caught messing with something that clearly wasn’t meant for little grubby hands like mine. I opened the door in the clock (a door! In a clock!) amazed, and stretched to feel as far inside as I could.
My heart beat more quickly and I groped blindly inside. I could imagine so clearly my fingers brushing the top of something, something out of place, something wondrous. It was a book! Yes, it had to be a book. I would fish it out, this little tome tucked away in a forgotten secret place. I would open it up, would see scrawling handwriting, dates atop journal pages. It would be a book filled with secrets. And the book would be written by me, of course! I’ve always sort of had a thing for time travel.
My dad and I lived with my grandparents for nearly nine years, and even before that I spent every summer at their house, in the little bedroom in the back. With the clock. The clock became my keeper of secrets - I ran a purple ribbon through the hole in the top of my diary key and kept it on the hook inside the clock. I stashed chocolates and notes, shark’s teeth and coquina shells inside it. At night, I would lay in the little narrow bed, listening to my grandfather snoring in the bedroom beside mine and the rumble of the television from the living room, wondering what I would say to myself from the future. Any day now. Any day.
It only works if it happened then, of course. Even back in the day, pondering paradoxes, I knew this. I’d have to put the diary in the clock at the right time - if I’d found it the first time I reached inside, that would be one thing. Unfortunately, though, I’d found only empty space. If I wrote the book at some nebulous, marvelous point in the future and stashed it inside, it would have to be after the last time I’d looked and not found it. Of course, once I did find it, it would be easy enough to make sure it showed up just before that. No need to go much further back, and if I could time travel - or cause a book to time travel, which might be a slightly easier feat - then surely I could manage a little bit of sneakiness.
What would the consequences be if I found it when I didn’t? Holding the two ideas in my mind simultaneously was delicious and confusing. Maybe anything! Maybe time would stop altogether, broken, like the clock itself which had ticked its last tock long before I ever noticed it. Being in time ourselves, we would never notice. Ever.
Maybe instead of that, an alternate version of me would poof into existence, having the advice and guidance of her future self. Of course, that wouldn’t be me, and having copies of myself in alternate timelines seemed kind of dubious. I mean, what would happen if one of those other selves should decide she liked my timeline better? Equipped with the knowledge from my future self, she could probably come to my timeline and replace me!
Even knowing in my heart of hearts how dangerous time travel would be - and how potentially devastating in its implications (hi, past tragedies! We chose to keep you all, despite how awful you were!) - I still yearned for that moment of contact, that brush with the future. It seemed to me like the universe was stuck in forward, and at super slow speed.
My fingers never brushed the spine of that little journal from the future. As I grew taller, I could finally reach all the way to the bottom of the clock and explore the nooks created by the scrollwork there. I found pieces of the past there every time I felt inside, but never the future.
There’s still hope, though. Every time I go back down to visit, I wait until I’m alone in the bedroom - for secrets should be kept faithfully even when they’re so small - and I squeeze between the closet and the steamer trunk to stand in front of the clock on the wall. I open the little door, close my eyes and reach inside. One of these days, maybe, maybe…
I was, perhaps, six years old, standing on tiptoe and hoping I wouldn’t get caught messing with something that clearly wasn’t meant for little grubby hands like mine. I opened the door in the clock (a door! In a clock!) amazed, and stretched to feel as far inside as I could.
My heart beat more quickly and I groped blindly inside. I could imagine so clearly my fingers brushing the top of something, something out of place, something wondrous. It was a book! Yes, it had to be a book. I would fish it out, this little tome tucked away in a forgotten secret place. I would open it up, would see scrawling handwriting, dates atop journal pages. It would be a book filled with secrets. And the book would be written by me, of course! I’ve always sort of had a thing for time travel.
My dad and I lived with my grandparents for nearly nine years, and even before that I spent every summer at their house, in the little bedroom in the back. With the clock. The clock became my keeper of secrets - I ran a purple ribbon through the hole in the top of my diary key and kept it on the hook inside the clock. I stashed chocolates and notes, shark’s teeth and coquina shells inside it. At night, I would lay in the little narrow bed, listening to my grandfather snoring in the bedroom beside mine and the rumble of the television from the living room, wondering what I would say to myself from the future. Any day now. Any day.
It only works if it happened then, of course. Even back in the day, pondering paradoxes, I knew this. I’d have to put the diary in the clock at the right time - if I’d found it the first time I reached inside, that would be one thing. Unfortunately, though, I’d found only empty space. If I wrote the book at some nebulous, marvelous point in the future and stashed it inside, it would have to be after the last time I’d looked and not found it. Of course, once I did find it, it would be easy enough to make sure it showed up just before that. No need to go much further back, and if I could time travel - or cause a book to time travel, which might be a slightly easier feat - then surely I could manage a little bit of sneakiness.
What would the consequences be if I found it when I didn’t? Holding the two ideas in my mind simultaneously was delicious and confusing. Maybe anything! Maybe time would stop altogether, broken, like the clock itself which had ticked its last tock long before I ever noticed it. Being in time ourselves, we would never notice. Ever.
Maybe instead of that, an alternate version of me would poof into existence, having the advice and guidance of her future self. Of course, that wouldn’t be me, and having copies of myself in alternate timelines seemed kind of dubious. I mean, what would happen if one of those other selves should decide she liked my timeline better? Equipped with the knowledge from my future self, she could probably come to my timeline and replace me!
Even knowing in my heart of hearts how dangerous time travel would be - and how potentially devastating in its implications (hi, past tragedies! We chose to keep you all, despite how awful you were!) - I still yearned for that moment of contact, that brush with the future. It seemed to me like the universe was stuck in forward, and at super slow speed.
My fingers never brushed the spine of that little journal from the future. As I grew taller, I could finally reach all the way to the bottom of the clock and explore the nooks created by the scrollwork there. I found pieces of the past there every time I felt inside, but never the future.
There’s still hope, though. Every time I go back down to visit, I wait until I’m alone in the bedroom - for secrets should be kept faithfully even when they’re so small - and I squeeze between the closet and the steamer trunk to stand in front of the clock on the wall. I open the little door, close my eyes and reach inside. One of these days, maybe, maybe…