My Clock Is Ticking Again

My old clock, which was a gift, which I think is from the 1940s or so, which was made in New Jersey, in a shape that mimics a ceramic kitchen plate, it works again. My clock, which nominally ticks for eight days before it needs to be wound, but was down to four days and then two, and then two hours, it went back to the giver of the gift for a mechanical tune up. On the back of my clock is inscribed by the giver: "Time is the most valuable thing you can spend."

The ticking sound of my clock, which is so pronounced in a quiet house, it's back. The ticking that sounds like crawling to the kitchen for water when the stomach flu had hold of me; that sounds like planning trips to see the Mayan ruins in Mexico; that sounds like "How was work today?"; that sounds like reading the Sunday paper and making egg and cheese breakfast muffins with veggie sausage; that sounds like the background noise behind Planet Earth in the living room; that sounds almost entirely like peace and only faintly like conflict, it's back. A fraught sound. A sweet, sentimental sound.