Future Unknown

To this day, I still don’t know what it was about the metronome that beguiled me so. All I can say is that it seemed to plant an idea in my head, the perception that I could somehow make time pass more resolutely by simply monitoring the accelerated motion of the dial. Foolish as it may seem, I was utterly convinced of this notion, had no reason to doubt it, for whenever I held that metronome in my eager hands, time invariably seemed to gallop.

It comforted me to see the dial, to know that by its measure, morning would surely come sooner and the house would once again be quiet. But in spite of the solace it offered, it wasn’t long before this practice of monitoring the passing hours had completely overwhelmed my thoughts.

And as it did, the glass case continued to dim. And the world outside grew darker, edging farther and farther away as I paid it less mind.

It was surprisingly easy to forget it. Even my own circumstances fell beyond the reach of my concern as I became increasingly preoccupied by this desire to hasten time. Initially, all I had wanted was to quicken the onset of a new morning. But soon my thoughts expanded, my actions developed a greater purpose, and now I imagined myself being propelled swiftly onwards to some distant future, to some far-reaching place where life would be entirely different from the suffocating walls of the Winter house.

To where this would take me, I hardly knew. The details mattered little to me. My sole discernment was that the future was a place of options, possibilities. A place where I could choose what my eyes would see, what my ears would hear. And that was enough for me, more than enough. All I had to do was wait for it to come.

Every day, I lived with this thought, constantly abiding alongside a desperate need to get to the next place somehow faster than time would allow. Always, I was waiting – for school to be over, for the clock to turn five, for morning to dawn, for Saturday and the respite of a piano lesson to come.

Time was simply too slow for me. It refused to keep up with my sprinting feet, which in my mind were soaring on ahead of it. So I made it go faster; lived one step farther and sooner than everyone else. I wanted to run from each grade to the next, from junior high to high school, high school to college. And I suppose college was the ultimate goal for me, that long sought final leap into freedom. It seemed to be as far away from home as I would ever get. And it stood in eager waiting as the place where time could finally sustain a slowing down.