Aaron Wolfe

We're moving to Long Island tomorrow.

It's funny of all days you're coming in today.

And I sort of like rock back on my heels in stunned silence.

And all I could see is him and the gravestones and a clock that looks just like the one that's in a box in my house waiting to come up to Boston.

And I look at him and I just say, well, I guess this is goodbye.

And he says, yeah, I guess.

And I leave.

That clock, my grandpa Bernie's clock, it never worked.

One night after like hours of Googling, I found these like rare clock fuses and I replaced the fuses in the clock and I plugged it in and the fluorescent light turned on and then it ran backwards.

Like a fricking time machine.

But also like a time machine.

My New York, my grandpa Bernie's New York, it's gone.

It doesn't exist anymore.

but I still see it here of all places.

I see it in the Lebanese market in Watertown.

I see it in me when I'm walking across Cambridge Common and I'm amazed by the history.

I see it in my son's love of Chinese food and smoked fish and in my daughter's laugh and her scream.

But most of all, I see it in the stories we tell each other around the dinner table at home, my home, underneath the clock that says Forsyth Monuments established 1911.