Romanticizing the Past

The kids are coming into their own stories.  My bride and I have worked to anchor them in their larger story, giving them family names and keeping heirlooms around the house.  

My wife inherited her grandfather’s grandfather clock.  We both grin each time we say that — an actual grandfather clock from her actual grandfather — who knew!  I called the clock repair people and asked that they come tune up the family inheritance.  ‘How old is it?,’ the scheduling lady wondered. ‘At least a hundred years old. I’m thinking 1870-kind-of-old.  I mean, I can’t find a number or anything, but it looks really old,’ I offered, trumpeting the find. 

So the clock man came out and setup his tools and cleaned and oiled and tuned the masterpiece.  The kids were mesmerized. The Horologist quickly realized what I did not want to; the truth about the heirloom. 

In short order, he told us the clock was indeed from the '70s…the 1970s, 

and hailed from the grand land of Douglasville…down by the airport,

and made by the great clockmakers…of Detroit.    

‘What’s it worth?’ I resigned, mentally recalculating the children’s inheritance.   

‘As much as your wife appreciates it,’ said the clock man. 

‘I don’t know what that means.’

‘It’s sentimental value is greater than its resell value,’ he noted, having clearly had this conversation before.

‘Is it worth more than I’m paying you to fix it?’

‘Let’s just consider this an investment in your wife.’

‘And by the way, the flux capacitor is going bad. You’ll need a new one,’ he noted, getting all the bad news out at once.  

‘How much does that cost?’ 

‘A happy wife is a happy life.’

I hate that line. 

I didn’t want to know the truth about the clock.  I wanted to tell myself a grand story of adventure in how it arrived here on a boat, carried through Ellis Island and how it had been protected by ancestors past with each move, guarding it from the ravages of wind, water and Fido, much as the French have protected the Mona Lisa, hiding it throughout history from raiders.  The story was worth more to me than the clock.  But now I know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the Bells of Westminster every hour on the hour, more or less. (I once had a client ask on a conference call if I were sitting at a train station).

This is what we do, isn’t it.  We romanticize the past.  We reminisce on the ‘good ol' days’ and carry our stuff from house to house because of the stories they hold.  Competing stories of the past can create challenges; ask any marriage or country at war. Unlike my clock, there’s no serial number and manual on the past.  And whether my clock is from 1974, 1874 or 1574, the flux capacitor thing that makes it tick doesn’t work. That is true whenever it came from.  

I wonder where else I am choosing not to face the reality of past and hang on to the story instead.  

And yet, the kids love to tell their friends that the tarnish came from their grandfather when he was a boy.  Knowing that Papa was once a boy and that there is proof is also real.  They like that. So does my wife.  Guess who’s getting another flux capacitor for Christmas.