Time to Let Go?

All photos by: Lisa L Peters ©

Just about a month before I turned four, my family moved into an old Victorian farmhouse. It was awkwardly nestled in a brand new suburban subdivision, built on the bulk of the land which used to make up the tree farm owned by its previous occupants. It was charmingly out of place. It was in an almost comic state of disrepair. And it was haunted.

---

The ghosts left behind by generations of hard working rural gardeners took on many forms. Strange noises echoed perpetually throughout the old rooms. Objects would appear seeminingly out of nowhere. Things that did not belong to us. Things left behind. But things that were not there when we'd arrived. Sometimes these objects would teleport from room to room. Sometimes they'd go missing for months, even years, in between. And often our own objects - the ones we brought with us - would vanish...never to be found again.

There was darkness in that house. I spent most of my days afraid of my own room. Terrified of the energy around me. Scared of the ghosts we'd agreed to live with and scared of the ghosts we were creating and adding to the fold. And I spent all of my nights in a gnarled ball buried beneath the sanctuary of woolen blankets. Holding my breath and willing myself invisible to the spirits that roamed hungrily around my bed.

---

There was also great beauty and light. My yard was an enchanted forest. My swing-set was nestled between two giant old apple trees. In the spring I soared beneath an intoxicating canopy of iridescent fragrant white blossoms. And in autumn the smell of tart, ripe apples filled the air. A mulberry tree grew outside one of my bedroom windows. There were pear trees, wild berries, wild flowers, butterflies, ladybugs, and endless nooks and crannies yielding countless mysteries and surprises to occupy my time. I saw bluebirds in the spring and red cardinals in the snowy trees of winter. In many ways, my childhood was spent living as the heroine in a gothic novel.

---

At some point, we unearthed a magical antique clock in the bowels of the house...the basement; a dungeon filled with anger and spiders and dust and smelly, dripping puddles.

My parents cleaned it up and had it repaired. It hung at the threshold of the back entrance to the kitchen and an old bedroom, which had been converted into a strange room that served as a music room, informal dining room, office, art studio, and gathering place for my mother's many groups and causes.

That clock had a melancholy, harmonic chime. It carried in its delicately carved wooden frame all of the weight of all of the minutes which had unfolded in that old and storied house. It knew all of the ghosts. The ones past. The ones present. And the future apparitions destined to come.

That clock held onto every single memory.

That clock now sits in my living room.

---

I have spent most of my life with this clock. It keeps my secrets. But it doesn't allow me to forget. And even though I rarely use it anymore, it silently marks the passing of every minute I draw breath. It mingles my moments with those of all of its former masters. We swirl together in an infinite loop of haunted time.

Perhaps I need to wind this old clock and finally listen to what is has to tell.