I have no memory of a childhood watch. It seemed as if there would always be time.

The hours first came to me in black and white, hanging large and round on the classroom wall at Washington Elementary. I’m sure we had a clock at home, but that was for my mother, not me. I didn’t even have one in my bedroom. She was my clock, waking me in time to get breakfasted and bused. Calling me in for dinner. Nudging me towards bedtime.

It was my first foreign language, as Mrs. Strand held up the cardboard clock, moving the hands, giving us the “befores” and “afters”… ten before eight, five after three… It took weeks before it became part of our vocabulary… but never as important as the word recess.

And it wasn’t just me. The Norton girls raced after the bus with hair dripping, in the wintertime frozen. The Schulz boys rubbed out their last cigarette to the sound of the air brakes of the bus. All still under the assumption there would be time.

It was only my grandparents who said it — perhaps they were the only ones old enough to know. As we rushed through meals, or raced through hallways, “Take your time,” they urged. How could we?

We eventually tried to trap it in boxes. Clock radios. Then cell phones. We can watch it constantly now, but it was never meant to be contained.

The sun comes up and Mrs. Strand is as near to me as the French path I will walk after breakfast. My mother’s voice in my heart. Every school day under foot, as clear as black and white. I will try not to, but I will race through the day. Stopping only to wonder, what did Grandma Elsie say?