I had a brief conversation with friends yesterday about teaching children how to read a clock. Although a couple of those friends are retired teachers, none of us knew whether or not learning to read a clock is part of formal school curricula these days. One retired teacher recalled when learning to tell time from a clock with hands that rotated around the face was part of the state curriculum for fourth graders. “I never learned the key for teaching the concepts,” the teacher stated. In a world of digital clocks with readouts in numerals, the concept of translating 12 numbers into the passage of hours consisting of 60 minutes and days of 24 hours was an educational challenge.

Another retired teacher recalled using money as an equivalent to drive the concept home. Children learn to count by fives in part by thinking of the value of a nickel. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty, and on up to sixty, makes it fairly easy to learn the number of minutes in each hour.

The whole conversation was sparked by my comments about our beloved mantle clock that has been passed down in our family for generations. The clock runs for just over 24 hours on a winding, has to be wound with a key, and makes a loud “tick tock” sound that an be heard throughout our house. It also rings on the hour counting off the hours with a chime. I know that our grandchildren have learned to count the chimes before they have learned to read the hands on the face of the clock.

All of the participants in the conversation had some memory of paintings by Salvador Dali depicting melting clocks. Limp clocks draped across branches and furniture bring to mind the arbitrary nature of time. You have to admit that there is something surrealistic about the ways we measure time with 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, and 60 seconds in a minute.

I’ve written multiple times about how time assumes different qualities at different moments of our lives. An hour spent waiting in a hospital waiting room has a different feel than an hour spent playing with grandchildren. An hour sleeping feels different than an hour trying to go to sleep. Some periods of time seem to pass quickly, others seem to drag.

Modern scientific method requires precise measurement of the passage of time. Digital displays of time are used in situations where mechanical clocks are not accurate enough to distinguish the nuances of very small amounts of time. While particle physicists speak of nanoseconds, geologists speak of eons and millennia. Different disciplines focus on different measurements of time.

The flow of the hours and the passage of time is a fascination for me in my retirement. There are days when my schedule is as full as was the case when I was working for a salary. I have lists of tasks that must be accomplished and appointments that require me to pay attention to the passage of time. I still need to be in the right place at the right time for a variety of activities. My passion for punctuality has not waned with my aging. My ability to keep track of a complex schedule, however, is not what it once was. I used to be able to look at a day’s schedule and keep all of its elements in my memory throughout the day. Now, I need to set alarms at time to remind myself of what I have planned to do. I find that I can get caught up in activities such as gardening or working in the shop and fail to keep track of the passage of time.

I wear a fairly sophisticated electronic watch that connects to my computer with bluetooth and syncs with the calendar in my phone, but I am careful to make sure that the display on the watch resembles a clock with hands that rotate around a dial with 12 numerals. I have found that my brain is better at anticipating my schedule when I glance at the hands on a face rather than interpreting a digital readout. I can see 2:58 and think to myself, “Good, it is not yet 3 o’clock!” When I see the minute hand nearing the top of the dial I am more aware of how much time remains.

Of course we have no real knowledge of one of the biggest issues of time for every human being. Even if we have a fairly realistic understanding of our age and how long we have lived, none of us know for sure how much time we have left in our lives. We acknowledge that we are mortal, but we don’t really know what that means. Having been with numerous people at the time of their dying, I am aware that the end of life is not governed by clocks. Although doctors and hospitals try to record an accurate account of the time of death, it is something that cannot be known in advance. Part of the process of dying is releasing concern for the passage of time.

In some ways the passage of the seasons is as important to my understanding of the meaning of life as is the passage of seconds and minutes. But part of the passage of seasons for most of my life has been the adjustment of our clocks that accompanies daylight savings time. We spring forward as the days lengthen and fall back to mark autumn. I get all of the clocks adjusted, including the mantle clock with hands that cannot be turned backwards. When we fall back, I stop the clock for an hour or more before setting it to the correct time. Each autumn is marked by an hour of quiet in our house when the tick tock is silenced. And yet time passes even though the clock has stopped.

Time continues to be an interesting concept for me even though I am not sure I understand its passage. Perhaps like a child who has not yet learned to tell time from the hands of a clock, I still have much to learn.