I checked my watch to see if it was indeed time to wake up. I hoped it wasn’t, but light streaming through the window said otherwise.
My watch, however, as to informing me of anything that was its job to do, had gone totally bonkers. Date and time were intermittently flashing, with both having returned to Day One, Minute One, which, I considered in retrospect, might be helpful to have those nearly six months back to live over.
To make corrections, get more stuff done.
Our granddaughter, who loves pushing buttons – but never pushing mine as it is my job, which I proudly, happily, and consistently do well, to spoil her – had evidently discovered the four yellow buttons on my exercise time piece (stop, start, splits, etc.) which also serves, normally, to digitally proclaim what month and day of the week it is.
And time of day.
Always accurate, although I must manually correct twice each year (Spring Forward, Fall Back).
Or when my granddaughter finds it.
Whereas in many, if not most, mythologies, the earth (from which life springs forth) is feminine, hence “Mother Earth,” timekeepers are dads: “Father Time.”
In Mitch Albom’s book “The Time Keeper”, the central character is Father Time “who is freed from exile and sent to Earth on the condition that he teaches two people on Earth the true importance of time, a teenage girl who does not wish to live anymore, and a dying old billionaire who wishes to live forever.”
Neither appreciate the time they’ve been given, the opportunities to truly live with the time they have left, the time – quickly passing, like an hourglass one-way draining – to make a difference.
That is Father Time’s job.
Still is.
As Rabbi Jason Miller said of Albom’s book, time is not just “on our wrists and computer screens, on our cell phones and on the walls of our home.”
Timekeepers are what those time pieces are.
But they are not what Fathers are.
Fathers do not so much keep time.
Fathers give time.
It comes then as no surprise that a gift of an Égard watch this Father’s Day will honor a deserving man of the many, many men whose stories of impact they had on their family and community are currently being heralded in 2ndVote.
Father’s Day.
It’s about time.
