I saw 2001, A Space Odyssey when it first came out in theaters. I saw Neil Armstrong step foot on the moon for the very first time in the Summer of 1969. I remember seeing a Gemini spacewalk on the black-and-white TV. I even remember standing in our backyard in Iowa, looking up at the blue sky, and seeing the bright pinpoint of light passing overhead that was John Glenn orbiting the Earth in his Mercury Capsule. When I was a child, I believed in space travel. I thought there was where I was one day going to go.
I believed I needed to be physically fit, smart, adaptable, and ready to accomplish anything necessary to leave my mark in life among the stars. I played sports full throttle, I got A’s in high school, and I won a full scholarship to college. It was the Space Program, not me who slowed everything down.
Of course, I went into education and became an English teacher instead. Rather than blasting off into space, I introduced classes to Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, and Kurt Vonnegut. I read out loud and took them to Mars with me and into the interstellar far reaches of an imagined future that was further off than I was led to believe. I was teaching the day the shuttle Challenger blew up, killing the first teacher in space as horrified students watched on classroom TV sets all across the nation.
But the twelve-year-old boy that lives in my head still has not lost the dream. I may not live to see it, but perhaps the memory of me will make it there with somebody’s child that my stories, beliefs, and passion were paid forward to by someone in my class who actually listened to me. It could happen. I am not a hopeless fool.
Catch a Falling Star 
The Clock on the Wall
Who in their right mind writes an essay about a clock on the wall? Well, the “right mind” thing gives me an out. I do watch the clock on the wall. Especially now that I am old, and the sand in the hour glass is running out. The clock on the wall can be quite entertaining. Especially one like the cuckoo clock that hangs in my parents’ front entryway. On the hour, the dancers twirl and the two goofballs in lederhosen saw away at the log they will never be able to cut in two.
My wife and I gave that clock to my parents as a gift for their 50th wedding anniversary. We bought it in Texas and brought it on a visit back to the family farm in Iowa. Having old German relatives as a boy, I remember waiting impatiently for the clock to strike in Great Aunt Selma’s house, anxious to see the cuckoo pop out and the clockwork entertainment do its little mechanical show. I’d have gladly wished on a star for the hours to pass instantly… to see the show again right away… and be older and wiser and able to do more. Back then it seemed like older folks like Aunt Selma lived forever, with her dried-apple face and German accent. Accumulated time seemed to have majesty and power. It was magical.
But now I am old. My joints hurt every time I move. I can’t get out of bed of a morning easily. Parts of me that I used to take for granted no longer work. I have forgotten what it feels like to feel good and full of energy. The time on the face of this old clock hasn’t changed in nearly a decade. My parents don’t keep it wound. We no longer look forward to the clock-Kinder dancing so often. If the clock stays forever at five after four, maybe the grim reaper won’t come knock at the door.
I have always believed that there was magic in old cuckoo clocks. It was a simple, earnest faith in magic that only a child can truly know. But now, as an old man, I remember.
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Tagged as clock magic, German cuckoo clocks, humor, magic, memory, metaphors for life, time passing