Grandfather clock

 My paternal grandfather coddled me. I was his favourite grandchild simply because I was his only girl grandchild and he unabashedly flaunted it. He was probably the only one in the family who actually showed his affection to openly to me, cuddled me as a baby, took me on his walks (on which he always carried a walking stick he didn't need and seemed to know everyone he crossed paths with). He had a booming laugh, had a favourite reclining chair, watered his plants diligently, would never get up to get his own water even and expect Bamma to fetch him everything, would buy her any and every book in the world she may like because he knew she enjoyed reading, played cards and chess with her because she liked to, grated my mother the wrong way due to his abrasiveness, dominated over my father putting him down always giving him childhood trauma, and sought to replace his daughter he'd sent off to the US with me. To me, he was a good grandfather, someone whose passing I took very hard at the age of 21. And just before that, he'd verbally made sure to tell me, that I needed to take care of his favourite pendulum clock and lovingly showed me each part, how to clean them, and put them together, wind up the clock and hang it up right. 

It was a throwback to my childhood, when I used to visit them over weekends. It was his Sunday ritual. And of course, like with everything he did while I was visiting, I had to participate. There were three keys, two looked like those that come with wind-up toys and one was a long thin hook shaped key, each with its own role and and its own frequency of needing to be used. The best days were when he opened up the clock and unpacked the parts and cleaned them and put them back together. 

Since then, I've moved countries, cities, houses and neglected my grandfather's clock which he bequeathed to me. That along with the aphorism he liked repeating "Time and tide wait for none." If I had lived by it better, if I had taken care of what I already had better... 

To me, that clock is the very epitome of my grandfather's memories. I was horrified when I found out that my father had stashed the clock in our OUTDOOR closet. I have brought it in, but I am scared to open it and look at its condition. What if it is un-salvageable? What if time and tide have done their damage already? On my grandfather's clock? On my grandfather's beloved granddaughter?

Anxiety

 

Smell of old paper

My great grandfather's room felt like a secret wonderland to me as a child. One was of course because I was always shooed away before I could enter by my mother and I would always get caught 9 times out of 10. It didn't matter how quiet I was. But the one or two times I managed to get in, I could tell that my grandfather didn't mind at all. He'd leave me alone to explore. There was a lot to love, the old Remington typewriter, black and white framed photos, exquisite curious stationary but what I remember most of all was the smell of musty old paper. Books, articles, old letters and correspondences, files, and who knows what more. Neatly organised in rows or stacked in piles. I had a vague notion that all that was mine to inherit. And when they were thrown away recklessly after my grandfather's passing like common paper, I cried a second time. Like he was stolen from me again. But I was just a just child, I barely knew him I was told. As though my afternoon explorations in his room and my childish communication and questions to him and his indulgence of me and our connection was not important. And yet, to this day, they say I am most like him. How ironic.