Tag Tuesday - Postcard Cutout, and A Story: TELLING TIME

This past week has been a rough one health wise, so I haven't posted anything since the last Tag Tuesday! We had another great turn out and I'm glad people are enjoying the challenge. If you want to see the other artists' work or join the challenge, click here!

(click for detail)

This is sort of simple this week, but hey - I'm glad I was feeling well enough to do something! I traced a tag shape on a postcard, cut it out and added some Tim Holtz vintage image tape on the left side and sticky ribbon across the top. I then cut out the door to the Art Hall and glued a colorful image in the opening, added a metal H, an arrow, brads and a tiny crown. It's finished off with a word cutout.

TELLING TIME

15th in a Tuesday Story Series

I grew up with analog clocks. My daughter grew up with digital clocks. I never thought much about the difference until a few years ago. When I was teaching her to tell time, I used a cardboard cutout of an analog clock but as she got older, digital clocks were fast becoming the preferred choice on radios, VCRs, CD players, and everything else that wanted to feature telling time as a selling point. So when she would hear me say " It's twenty minutes till nine (or whatever hour)", she would translate that in her head as it's 8:40. And conversely, if I asked her the time, she would say 8:40, and I would translate that in MY head as twenty minutes till nine!

Finally one day she asked me, somewhat exasperated, why I told time that way. I was startled when she did, because I had never really thought about it. Part of it was, of course, you do what you are used to doing (or saying). So unless I was actually looking at a digital clock, I continued to say, or read, the time as analog. I preferred an analog watch, and I had a battery run analog clock in the kitchen. 

Recently I was pondering why is that I still prefer analog clocks. I have a red antique  looking French clock in my studio, and not too long ago I purchased a bedside clock with an analog face for my nightstand. I think it's because when I see the face, I see the immediate past and future at one time. I can see the time I have left or the time I've spent doing something; in a digital clock, it's only about that moment, glaring out at you in red lights (usually). On an analog clock, time is spread out, you have a better grasp of where you are and how much lays before you. 

When I was a small child, I remember spending a week with my grandparents and they had an old wind up chime clock on the wall. In the room where I slept, I could hear it ticking in the hallway, and it had a strangely comforting sound. Grandpop would wind the clock every morning and check his pocket watch to it. There is something about a ticking clock that has an ethereal whisper about it, when you stop and think, because it brings us closer to eternity - when there will be no time as we know it.

Recently I was writing a correspondence to a friend who lives out of state; he had written concerning my health and a particularly stressful experience we are having with a family member. I'm enclosing the last paragraph of that letter to him and I hope you will be encouraged by it for the different times of your life! 

When my mother died in 2007 and we were cleaning out her little house, I brought a battered old clock home along with many other things. I kept that small bedside clock on my nightstand. It had to be wound every day and the rim was bent and the "night glow" feature no longer worked. I remember that clock being on my parent's bedside when I was a small child. If I wound it too much, it would stop and I would have to jiggle the knob a bit to get it running again. But I loved the soft tick tock. It finally stopped altogether a few months ago, and there seemed to be an empty space in the air around my night stand. I finally replaced it with a very similar one; it's battery operated and its a bit bigger (so I can see the numbers easily) but the ticking is like the little old clock. It's a reminder to me that time is not infinite - each tick brings me closer to the time when eternity will replace this battered place and body with perfection. And even on my worse days, or when the drama erupts again, or loneliness clouds my thoughts, the ticking continues. Whatever happens in my life does not stop time, does nothing to make time stand still. And I remember that God is like that, He is not stopped by what I am enduring, He loves the bent and the broken, and He is more faithful than the clock. This too shall pass, and someday, will pass into eternity. 

Have a great Tuesday!!

Rebecca