by Katelyn Bland-Clark

“Tih-tah, tih-tah, tih-tah.” He repeats his first word, rhythmically swaying from side to side and sweeping his small arms left to right, right to left.

“That’s right!” I say. “Tick-tock. Good job, Avery. The clock goes tick-tock.”

My granddaddy made me a grandfather clock before Avery was even a consideration in the deepest recesses of my mind.  My granddaddy is a carpenter.  My child is his namesake, and he is entirely enchanted by the fruits of his great-granddaddy’s labor: the clock’s steady Westminster chimes.

The clock marks another passing quarter hour on another unremarkable day. I have lost count of the unremarkable days. He quickly crawls to me. “Tih-tah!”  I mirror his excitement. There is so little to be excited about outside these four walls, so much to be excited about for four minutes of each hour inside them 

“Tih-tah.” Such a simple thing, this perpetual cycle of escalating rhythms. It elicits pure joy; his face floods with contagious sparkle. I find myself envious of his wonder.  When did I lose mine?

Life has been an endless carousel since he was born a year ago. A carousel from which I cannot alight. I go around and round: changing and spraying and washing cloth diapers, breastfeeding and snack-making, comforting him when he cries, tracking his nap cycles, reading Goodnight Moon, and cleaning up the food that seems to work its way into every crevice of his booster seat during every meal. For the past five months, the carousel from which I cannot escape has become overcrowded, the ups and downs expanding to include masked grocery store runs, Zoom meetings and virtual game nights, unacknowledged job applications, and bleak headlines. None of us can escape the tedium.

 To Avery, none of this matters. The clock still chimes every fifteen minutes.  The chimes still become progressively longer, their crescendo a dependable, if unpredictable, number of peals. There is still something to look forward to several times a day.

“What sound does the clock make?”

He reaches into the corners of his mind, frozen for a moment.  And then, slowly, “Ooh-ooh.  Ah-ah-ah.” It’s late in the day and his brain brings forth one of the sounds he has mastered, knowing he has been right with this response before.

“No, that’s what a monkey says. What sound does the clock make?”

Another pause. “Ooh-ooh.  Ah-ah-ah.”  The associations I’ve drilled into him are jumbled in his tired mind.

“Can you say tick-tock?”

“Tih-tah.”

“Good job Avery. The clock goes tick-tock.”

I’m not sure I should be teaching him what sounds monkeys make. Maybe it would be more beneficial for him to learn words like water or banana or up.  But these aren’t call-and-response words, they are words of need. You can’t show off your baby’s party tricks on a Zoom call with words of need.  You can ask him, “What does a cat say?” and beam in pride when he responds correctly with mao. When he gets tired, cats might say ooh-ooh ah-ah-ah, and if you ask him to say dada, he may say mama instead. But after spending all day tending to his every whim and need, hearing him say mama when he’s been asked to say dada is a small satisfaction. 

Mommy, daddy, tick-tock, meow.  One day, he will say all these things and more with ease. Watching the wheels in his growing brain turn is a momentary joy.

One day, the clock will no longer hold its charm. The chimes will no longer contain their magic. He will no longer come to me when he wants to share a moment of excitement or wonder. Perhaps he will cease to experience wonder altogether. This season will have passed, and only I will remember the joy of rushing with him in my arms to catch the last of the chimes and count the peals of the hour together, his tiny, sticky hands gripping tightly to my shoulder, a ribbon of drool trailing down his chin from his toothy grin.

And one day, the pandemic will be as insignificant as the striking of the first quarter or, at most, as significant as the pealing of the twelfth hour. The Zoom meetings will be replaced by real hugs and human touch and outings without face masks. The monotony of life in quarantine replaced by air travel and adventure and preschool and play dates.

But for now, I hold my toddler tight, kiss his temples, and delight in his delights. I teach him how to howl and meow and walk. How to embrace the day with an excitement I haven’t truly felt since the world shut down in March. The world may have shut down, but he grows on. He lives in a reality where obscured faces are normal, where he has learned to proudly say “tih-tah” into a FaceTime call as his great-granddaddy smiles with the same twinkle in his eyes. I hope he keeps the twinkle, just as his great-granddaddy has. He deserves that much. He deserves all the wonder that counting to eleven can bring, for as long as it can.