One of the clocks in my small collection of vintage alarm clocks. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
TIME TICKS. Things to do. Places to go. Appointments to keep. People to see. Conversations to have. Books to read. And for me, also, stories to write, deadlines to meet. Tick. Tick. Tick.
As I age, I feel more cognizant of time and the need to use it in the best possible way. The need to balance work and leisure. The need to spend more time with my core family. The need to use my talents in a positive way, in a way that makes a difference. The need to be there for, and serve, others. Tick. Tick. Tick.
We can’t stop time and aging. But we can manage how we use our time. I’m of the age where there’s significantly less time ahead of me than behind, although none of us knows the number of our days on this earth. Tick. Tick. Tick.
An important message displayed on a Scrabble board at LARK Toys, Kellogg, MN. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
I hope we can all use our time to show compassion and empathy for others. Be kind. Be that person who listens rather than talks. Be that person who smiles, who hugs, who holds a door open. Be that person who sends an encouraging text or note. Be that person who reaches out to someone who is hurting, grieving, in need and do whatever you can to uplift and help. Tick. Tick. Tick.
I used magnetic words to create this short message on my fridge. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
Think before you speak or write, because words matter. Words can build relationships or words can destroy them. In a time when vitriol runs rampant, pause before letting words fly across a keyboard or from your mouth. I expect we all hold regrets for words we’ve written or spoken. Use self-control. Ask like you care. Time ticks. Let’s use our time in a way that embraces goodness and kindness, love and compassion. Tick. Tick. Tick.
WHAT WOULD YOU like to add to this conversation about the use of time?
I took this photo 10 years ago, when the refurbished Security Bank Building clock was reinstalled in downtown Faribault. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo 2015)
THIS WEEK MARKED a week of time. Of deadlines and changes. Time to get the fish house off the lake by midnight Monday in the lower two-thirds of Minnesota or risk a fine or house removal. Time to pull out the snowblower, for some the first time this winter. Time to give up sweets, or whatever, in the penitent season of Lent. And now this weekend, time to move time forward an hour.
Looking from the bank clock south on Central Avenue. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo 2015)
That got me thinking about some of the outdoor public clocks I’ve seen through the years. They are not only useful if you want to know the time. But they are also works of art and part of local history.
A 1950s scene along Faribault’s Central Avenue, with the Security Bank Building clock in the background, is depicted in this mural in our downtown district. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
Take for example, four prominent clocks in Faribault. A refurbished 1915 box style clock graces the Security Bank Building at 302 Central Avenue in the heart of downtown. In 2015, a professional clock “doctor” and a local stained glass artist restored the clock with funding efforts led by the Faribault Rotary Club. The bank clock is truly an historic and artistic jewel in my community. I can only imagine how many people have walked beneath that clock in its 110-year history.
The 1929 section of Buckham Memorial Library with its signature central tower. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
Several blocks to the south, a clock focuses the base of the central tower at Buckham Memorial Library, a lovely Moderne/Art Deco style limestone building constructed in 1929 and on the National Register of Historic Places. The stained glass window below the clock was designed by Charles Connick of Boston. This is a timeless classic building where generations of families have pulled books from the shelves to grow their knowledge and simply for the joy of reading.
A bagpiper plays outside the Rice County Courthouse topped by a clock. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
Just blocks away, a clock fronts the Fourth Street side of the Rice County Courthouse, built in 1932, also in the Art Deco style. Each year, events honoring veterans happen at the Rice County Veterans Memorial within view of the courthouse clock. For a moment or an hour, time stands still as we remember the sacrifices made for country, for democracy, by our veterans.
A view of the Shumway Hall tower from City View Park. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
And then across the Straight River on the east side of Faribault, the Shumway Hall clock tower rises on the campus of Shattuck-St. Mary’s School in a complex of buildings that looks more castle than private college prep school. City View Park atop a hill blocks from campus offers a bird’s eye view of the tower, a view that is especially stunning in autumn. Shumway’s tower is assuredly a Faribault landmark, with Shumway Hall built in 1887 and on the National Register of Historic Places. Thousands of students have passed beneath that clock tower as they learned, studied and grew. Time passages.
Each day we mark time. Just as these notable outdoor public clocks do in Faribault. I expect most locals take these historic clocks for granted, pass by them without a thought. Too often we do that in our personal lives also, thinking we have all the time in the world. Until we don’t.
The restored Security State Bank Building clock in historic downtown Faribault. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
TIME, WHEN YOU’RE YOUNG, seems to pass slowly. You’re waiting, always waiting. To turn another year older. To master a skill. To gain independence. To do whatever seems so important you wonder how you can possibly wait for another day or week or month to pass.
Now I wish time would slow down. But it can’t and it won’t and so I accept the reality of time passing, of aging, of days disappearing too quickly. Of celebrating my 50-year high school class reunion this year. Of my youngest turning thirty. Of me nudging seventy.
A street clock in historic downtown Wabasha. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
In a recent conversation with a beloved aunt, she shared that she can’t believe how old her nieces and nephews are, considering she’s only twenty-nine. I love that about Aunt Dorothy, who has always and forever declared herself on the cusp of thirty while in reality she’s closing in on ninety. I like her thinking.
(Book cover sourced online)
By happenstance, I picked up a children’s picture book at my local library a few weeks ago that focuses on time. I’m not trying to go back in time to my childhood. Rather, I enjoy books written for kids. Many hold important messages and beautiful art that resonate with me. I highly-recommend you check out recently-published children’s picture books to see how they’ve evolved over the decades into some timely masterpieces of words and art.
Among the books I selected was Time Is a Flower, written and illustrated by Julie Morstad of Vancouver, British Columbia. In her opening page, Morstad writes of time as a clock, as a calendar, in the traditional ways we consider time.
A prairie sunset in southwestern Minnesota. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
But then the book unfolds, page by page, into time comparisons that are simplistic, everyday, ordinary, unremarkable. Yet remarkable in the way Morstad presents them with sparse words and bold art. If I could rip the pages from her book, I would frame her illustrations of a sunset reflected in sunglasses; a child’s long wavy locks woven with bird, butterfly and flower; and a wiggly tooth in a gaping mouth.
A swallowtail butterfly feeds on a zinnia. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
Time is the moments, the memories. The details. Not necessarily the extraordinary. That is the message I take from Morstad’s book. Appreciate the caterpillar, not just the butterfly. Appreciate the seed, not just the flower. Value the slant of sunlight across the floor, and the shadows, too.
A princess by Roosevelt Elementary School kindergartner Ruweyda, exhibited in March 2023 at the Student Art Show, Paradise Center for the Arts, Faribault. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
As I consider Time Is a Flower, I think of my dear aunt half a country away in New Jersey. Too many years have passed since I’ve seen Aunt Dorothy, so long that I can’t recall the last time we embraced. But I hold memories of her, of our time together. She was the young aunt who arrived from the Twin Cities with discarded jewelry and nail polish for me and my sisters. She was the aunt who called her husband, “My Love,” an endearing name that imprinted upon me her deep love for Uncle Robin (who died in January). She is the aunt who took me into New York City when I was a junior in college visiting her on spring break. She is the aunt who, for my entire life, has called me “My Little Princess.”
A 1950s scene in downtown Faribault honors history and the passage of time in this mural. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
Yes, time passes too quickly. The clock ticks. Days on the calendar advance. Years pass.
Each spring the daffodils bloom. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
But within each day, seconds and minutes and hours remain. Time to live. Time to love. And time to remember that time is like a flower. Sprouting. Growing. Blooming. Dying. Time is a moment, until it’s a memory.
Most people no longer wear wrist watches. I still do. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
NOTE: Remember, this Sunday, March 10, time changes as we shift to daylight savings time in the U.S. We lose an hour of time as we spring forward.
TIME. For two hours Thursday afternoon, I watched the memorial service for George Floyd in Minneapolis broadcast on TV. Singing. Praying. Sharing of memories. Laughing. Crying. Calls for justice. And in the end, at the end, it was the 8 minutes and 46 seconds that mourners stood in silence which felt the most intensely and emotionally powerful. The length of time a former Minneapolis police officer, now charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter, was shown in a video kneeling on Floyd’s neck. It seemed an interminably long time.
Garden art given to me by my mom many years ago. Minnesota Prairie Roots file photo.
TIME. The Rev. Al Sharpton, who spoke at the service, quoted Ecclesiastes 3, which references time. “Time is out for empty words and empty promises,” the reverend said, as he called for lasting change. For equality. For justice. The time is now.
Minnesota Prairie Roots file photo.
TIME. Hope is rising. Not as a wish, but as an action, as a movement toward lasting change.
TO EVERYTHING THERE IS A SEASON and a time to every purpose under heaven…
Ever since the pastor read Ecclesiastes 3: 1 – 13 as a scripture reading last week at my church, I’ve pondered the words in verse 7: …a time to be silent and a time to speak.
How do you know? How do you know when to remain silent or when to speak?
I understand a time to weep and a time to laugh and a time to mourn and a time to dance. Those are easy. But how do you decide whether to open your mouth or zip your lips?
Taking that a bit further, how do you decide when to act or when to allow things to unfold as they may?
I believe that we are sometimes called to act and/or to speak. But how do we determine when we should talk or take action? President Obama, for example, recently stated in the aftermath of the deadly shootings in Oregon that “our thoughts and prayers are not enough.” I believe firmly in the power of prayer and I pray daily. Yet, I agree with the President. (I’m not taking a stand on gun control here, just the need to “do something.”)
As parents, especially, we struggle with how much we should say, if anything. It is easy when the kids are little. We are, mostly, able to curb negative behavior, keep our children from danger, and guide them by our examples, discipline, love and care.
Then our children grow into adulthood and they are in charge of their lives. We have given them, as my friend Kathleen says, “roots and wings, roots and wings.” How, then, do you determine when to speak or to remain silent? If your adult son or daughter was trapped inside a burning building, you wouldn’t just stand there and do nothing simply because they are adults, would you? I’m oversimplifying. But you get my point.
Have you witnessed a situation involving strangers that requires an instant decision? Speak up or remain a silent bystander. Recently, while attending a community event, I watched an angry young mother rage at her daughter. Yanking and yelling. I felt my blood pressure rise as the preschooler cowered in her mother’s presence and slunk into a corner behind a door. If the mother would have pushed an inch further, I would have intervened. I decided not to inflame the situation and was eventually able to comfort the young girl with soft words of kindness. Later I witnessed the mom once again yelling at her passel of children. And I wondered if she treats her children like this in public, how does she treat them at home? And why was she seemingly so overwhelmed? What was she dealing with in her life?
I don’t mean to judge. But you see the dilemma. Determining whether to speak or to remain silent is not always black-and-white clear.
ON THE AFTERNOON MY HUSBAND and I dined at Teluwut in Lake Mills, Iowa, family and friends were filtering into Jayde Thompson’s graduation reception across the street at the Senior Citizen Center.
The juxtaposition of that reception venue was not lost on me. Young and old. Beginnings and endings.
Not that senior citizen is an end. But it’s nearer ending than beginning. And although those of us who qualify for senior citizen status may sometimes feel young at heart, we no longer fit the physical definition of young.
All too many days now I wonder how the years vanished. I was once a Jayde Thompson, albeit not a cheerleader, embarking on life, eyes focused on the future. Today it’s not as much about the future as about yesterday. Or perhaps it’s that I think more now about my children’s futures.
May and June mark periods of transition for many families. Passage of time. Ceremony and applause and tears. Moving forward and standing still. Time gone. Youth beginning that all too quick movement of days, weeks, months and years that propel into the future, to wondering where yesterday went.
I recently started collecting alarm clocks and now have four, three Westclox and one General Electric.
NEVER HAVE I BEEN MORE COGNIZANT of the passage of time than during this past year.
I can’t pinpoint a precise reason for this deep sense of time fleeting. Rather, a combination of life events has spawned this feeling.
A year ago, my eldest married. Although she graduated and left home 10 years ago and her sister two years later, only two years have passed since my youngest started college. He’s in his third year now, his second in Boston. He spent the summer there, too, working. I haven’t seen him in three months, won’t see him for another three.
I miss him and the girls—their closeness, the hugs, the conversation, the everything (almost) that comes with parenting children you love beyond words. Too many days I wish only to turn back the moments.
I wish again to be that young mom, with issues no bigger than the occasional two-year-old’s tantrum or the snarky teen or a kid I can’t rouse from bed or the picky eater. But when you’re handling such challenges, they seem ominous and big and looming. Ridiculous.
If only we knew.
Granted, I am, as the old adage says, “older and wiser.” But such wisdom comes via life experiences that color hair gray. Or maybe not solely. Time does that, too.
I am now the daughter with a mother in a nursing home, my father in his grave for nearly a dozen years. A friend noted the other day that he never saw his parents grow old to the age of needing his care. And I wondered if that was good or bad and then I didn’t want to think about it anymore.
I am now so close to age sixty that I feel my fingers reflexively curving around the numbers.
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