The Rural Voice, 2006-11, Page 6Carol Riemer
It's onlg a matter of time
Carol Riemer
is a freelance
writer who
lives with her
husband and
two
children near
Grand
Valley,
Ontario.
Some say that balance is the
answer to a busy life. But juggling
one's priorities can have its own set
of difficulties, especially where
others are concerned.
Now that our two kids have gone
back to school and things have settled
down, a routine of sorts has begun to
take hold. I've even managed to steal
a few moments to browse through my
favourite antique shop. Here, no one
seems to be in a hurry. People take
their time, stopping to study. with
interest, the various collectibles and
artifacts that line the old wooden
shelves and adorn the walls. A
handcrafted pine hutch plays host to a
dark mahogany and brass mantle
clock silently marking the passage of
time. Remnants of yesterday, cast-
iron tractor seats conspire with a
variety of crosscut saws, oil lamps
and salt glazed ceramic jugs to
impose a slower pace more
reminiscent of an earlier age.
In our house. time is often relative
to whichever room one happens to be
in. It doesn't matter how I try to
synchronize our clocks, they resist
my attempts to modify their
individual personalities. The digital
clock on the stove always differs
from the ones on the microwave and
the VCR. Irreconcilable differences
exist between our clock radios, the
computer clock, the timers. and an
assortment of digital and analogue
watches. The old grandfather clock in
the hall has had more than enough
time on its hands, since my husband
and I built it nearly 20 years ago.
These days, however, it seems that
we have too many timepieces and
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2 THE RURAL VOICE
never enough time. It makes me long
for the days of the sundial.
The sundial was a truly ingenious
invention, an early device that
indicated the time of day by the
shadow that its pointer cast. It
measured time by the movement of
the sun across the sky and revealed,
in the length of the days, the ultimate
change of the seasons.
Subsequently, time became
measured by a number of other,
equally impressive devices like the
water clock, the candle clock and the
hour glass. Eventually, the
mechanical clock made its way into
time keeping history with the advent
of a weight driven apparatus and the
addition of the pendulum.
With the introduction of Standard
Time in 1883, time was organized
into international time zones, all
based on mean solar time established
at Greenwich Observatory in
Greenwich, England. Then, the First
World War came and Daylight
Saving Time was adopted to help
save fuel and energy. It basically
called for the clock to be set ahead
one hour in the spring, and adjusted
to fall back one hour in the autumn.
Farmers, however, were not always
pleased by this new system, their
days being more reliant on a regular
time for sunrise and sunset. Today,
Daylight Saving Time is still with us.
It starts on the first Sunday in April
and ends on the last Sunday in
October.
When my husband and I drove our
kids back to university this fall, I
barely had a chance to reflect on the
fact they were going away. Suddenly,
I found myself fighting back tears,
giving our son and daughter a good-
bye hug and asking them to
remember to call home. My husband
told me not to worry, assuring me
they would be fine.
Later that day, the phone rang and
I rushed to answer it. The kids were
asking for some things they had
forgotten. Searching for something to
write with, I quickly gestured to my
husband. As he handed me a pen, he
smiled and said "See, I knew they
would call. It was only a matter of
'ime."0