![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/Clock.jpg\" "\\"Clock\\"")
One of my worst memories of third grade was when Sr. Mary Frances asked me to go check what time it was for her.\u00a0 A small clock was on the counter near the sink, so I went over to look, but I couldn\u2019t read what the hands were telling me.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t yet know how to tell time.\u00a0 Sister sent over my friend Leslie to help me, and Leslie knew right away what time it was.\u00a0 She told me, I told the teacher, we went back to sit on the rug, and class went on.<\/p>\n
Not a big moment of shame, you might think.\u00a0 But it was for me.\u00a0 There are odd things about this memory, but I don\u2019t question them because the feeling remains real.\u00a0 I was ashamed that I couldn\u2019t tell time.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t help me that my teachers kept teaching me the hour and the half hour because in real life, the clock hands were almost never (only twice an hour) on those precise positions. It didn\u2019t help when they said to ignore the second hand, like it didn\u2019t matter.\u00a0 That speedy red hand was the most exciting thing up there.<\/p>\n
By fourth grade, I still couldn\u2019t read clocks. \u00a0It wasn\u2019t until my dad took off his watch for me to hold and taught me the whole system, minute by minute, from the second hand and all the way up, that I finally understood the pattern.\u00a0 He let me ask questions, like what time would it be if the hands were here, like this?\u00a0 And he showed me that the hour hand couldn\u2019t be quite in that place if the minute hand was there, because of the relationship between the hands.\u00a0 So I learned the system by which we count time, and I felt safe.\u00a0 I\u2019d never again have to be embarrassed by not knowing how to tell time.<\/p>\n
People ask me how much of Gaia from Birthmarked<\/em> is in me. \u00a0Who hasn’t felt ignorant? \u00a0Who hasn’t been an outsider? \u00a0If I can still feel my father\u2019s heavy, warm watch in my little fingers, I can know how deeply Gaia felt her father\u2019s love.\u00a0 Some things are universal.\u00a0 Or timeless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of my worst memories of third grade was when Sr. Mary Frances asked me to go check what time it was for her.\u00a0 A small clock was on the counter near the sink, so I went over to look, but I couldn\u2019t read what the hands were telling me.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t yet know how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[256,29,37],"class_list":["post-1770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birthmarked","tag-childhood","tag-gaia","tag-writing-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1770"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1777,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1770\/revisions\/1777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}