Old Reliable

Living gratefully today, I appreciate the power of emotional healing and the simplicity of taking a drink of clean water.

There is a clock that hangs on the wall in the house my parents and now my brother have lived in for nearly forty years. The clock moved with us from the home we all consider our true "home place" and where my other brother and his wife have lived since we moved from there when I was 15.

The clock was a gift to my parents from another brother and his wife. It is a battery-operated chiming clock that sounds at every hour and half-hour. At the hour, it chimes for the hour. Eight chimes for eight o'clock. It is over forty years old and has remained reliable all these years.

It has hung on the same wall, serving as a reminder of what was, what and who have passed, and what is today. Moment by moment. It is the same clock that woke me up from my Sunday afternoon naps as I slept off yet another hangover as a teenager, and that got me thinking to take a picture this past weekend:


Reliable. Like the sun coming up each morning. Like the seasons changing. Reliable, like my siblings and I are for one another and our mother. There's comfort in this clock and in the reliability of some aspects of life.

That comfort is needed, because so much is also unreliable. Our mother's memory and health. Our own aging bodies and minds. The assurance that we will be here to see that next sunrise. And on a wider scale: our fragile Earth, the moral decline of our culture, what the future holds for us individually and collectively.

Starting each day with gratefulness is a reliable practice for me. It brings stability to instability. It brings energy to what can be exhausting. It motivates me to move forward and do my part to make a positive difference in an ever-evolving family and world.

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