Whenever I go and visit my parents in Italy, I always manage to run into the same uninvited guest…
Time with its invasive personality ends up dominating my thoughts and many of the things I do.
 I can’t open a drawer in my old bedroom without stumbling into an object whose life has been sucked dry by the passing of time… Take an old bottle of perfume… its content lost its soul long ago and no longer brings back memories from my last year in high school…
The day I arrived, an old friend called. We had not talked in 27 years. After hearing my voice and a few minutes on the phone, she said she was overwhelmed… it had been too long and she needed… more time.
I had had enough… That’s when I decided to look for something that would help me tame time.
So I drove to Verona to visit my 102-year-old grandmother… who, I figured, might know one thing or two about keeping time at bay. I asked her if she could give me my grandfather’s watch, one he used to wear over 40 years ago.
May be I have fallen for the endless series of Swiss watch ads that embrace me every time I land at Geneva airport…
May be I am a sucker for their tag lines… But something in me desperately wants to believe that my grandfather’s watch was built for the generations to come.
At the jewellery shop where I took it to be polished, they told me that normally watches of this brand last for 100 years.
Who knows… I might have finally found a way to bridge time!
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OMG, your grandma is 102! You have great genes that will last you well in your lifetime…
This is such a touching meditation on time, Silvia.
Thank you, YM. Not sure about my genes… But of one thing I am sure… my obsession with time will last for a lifetime