The Alarm Clock and the Monastery

“My alarm clock is broken,” my 88-year-old mother told me.

“Do you want me to take a look at it?” I replied, having checked and discovered that the AM and PM settings were reversed, which would have an effect on whether or not the alarm went off at 6:30 a.m. so that Mom could get ready for Sunday Mass. She told me that she’d wake up about 5:30 and lie there, worrying that she would sleep in and not be ready for me when I came to get her.

“No, I’ve had that one for a long time and I think I need a new one,” she answered.

So, after she took me out to a very nice lunch on my birthday, at the Mexican restaurant nearby, we ran over to the mall to look at alarm clocks. We did this because Mom said that she had gotten a clock at the neighborhood hardware store and it didn’t work very well.

Lo and behold, there was only one alarm clock in the whole store and it happened to be a replica of a 1950’s wind-up alarm clock, like the ones Mom had used many years ago.

Back at her apartment, we got it out of the package and set it up, though I noticed that it was running slow just during my visit. But Mom was pleased with it and wanted to give it a try.

By the next day, she reported that it had run down at 4 a.m. I suggested that maybe it needed to be wound up more, but she said that she’d tried that, and then the little wind-up key on the clock had fallen off.

So, we made plans to return it to the store. “It cost $16, after all,” she remarked. Since she only needed an alarm a couple of times a month because we went to Saturday night Mass half the time, I offered to simply give her a call at 6:30 on the mornings when she needed an alarm. “You do so much for me already,” she answered, and then we agreed to look for something else when I took her to an appointment the next Monday.

When I picked her up to go yesterday, she came out without the clock, sales slip and so forth, so I ran into her apartment and got the sack containing them, which was all ready to go, in a white paper freezer bag, neatly closed with a clothes pin on the top. I went in to her bedroom and brought out the offending, “broken” alarm clock as well.

While Mom was at her appointment, I checked the “broken” alarm clock and discovered that the AM and PM settings were indeed reversed. When reset, the alarm worked just fine.

I explained this to Mom. We returned the wind-up alarm clock. By then I was running out of time, though she would have enjoyed going out to lunch. It was a beautiful autumn day. We drove home without trying another store to see if they had any alarm clocks that might be easier to operate than her old one, though I had grown doubtful about that.

I offered to write up a set of directions on how to work her alarm clock and she was pleased with this idea. She wanted to sit beside me while I did so and thought that she might be able to figure things out that way.

In the car, she talked about how she had a block in her head and couldn’t remember how to work her alarm clock, which she’d had for several years. The only thing I could think of to say was that she was trying to think with an 88-year-old brain and it already had lots of memories and knowledge and experience to manage. It was amazing, I said, how well our brains worked, considering all that we asked them to do. She then remarked that I had just turned 64 myself, which I thought was a low blow. “I’m doing the best I can to hold things together,” I answered.

When I actually got to her apartment, I realized that all she needed to know was how to turn the alarm off and on, as she had told me that she only used it on Sunday mornings to awaken at 6:30 a.m.

I had her come stand by me at the window and showed her the tiny print that indicated how to turn the alarm off and on. She pointed at the PM designation on the screen that afternoon and said, “How do I make that go away?”

I said, “You don’t need to. It’s set just the way it should be. You just need to turn the alarm on when you need it.” Before I left, she talked again how about she’d had that alarm clock for several years and always used to operate it herself.

So now I feel a little bit guilty that I didn’t take the time yesterday afternoon to write out detailed directions on how to set the time and the alarm on that clock. Idiotically, like many electronic devices, it’s a multi-step process. First you have to set a button that gives you the choice to set the time, set the alarm or “Run,” which means that the settings are correct as is. Then, you have to push down an Hour or Minute button until the clock arrives at the desired time, making sure that you’ve selected PM, if need be, and then press “Run,” that non-intuitive indicator. Then, if desired, you have to turn the alarm on.

It’s six of one and half a dozen of the other. Will more detailed directions just leave her utterly baffled, or will they empower her? I should go back and offer to print up more directions, since that’s what Mom asked for. “I think I could do it if it’s written down,” she’d said.

Somebody could make some money selling a clock that’s easier for old people to operate, I thought, including one with labels on it that aren’t in 4 point type. There’s probably one on the internet that we could try. But, would a new alarm clock simply be confusing in a new kind of way?

This morning I was ironing a shirt when I thought about St. Benedict. The nuns at the monastery where I go on retreat bow to one another as they begin their chapel services. I always thought that was just one more thing they did, until, years after I began going there, one of them explained that they always used to bow to each other every time they passed in the hall. They were bowing to the Christ in each other. In more recent years, they had, in their eminently practical way, simplified the bowing to chapel only.

Benedict organized his community with the simple, yet revolutionary notion, that we find the divine through each other. The little irritations, and for me this week, the little griefs of living with others offer us the opportunity to buff away a bit more of our selfishness every day.

My monastery includes my husband, my Mom, and Scamper, the dog. Each time I behave with consideration toward them, which isn’t always the case, I get the chance to edge a little closer to the divine.

This alarm clock thing has been bugging me because it feels like part of a gradual, but inexorable, decline. Can’t things at least just stay the way they are right now? Mom’s life isn’t perfect, but at least she gets to live in her own apartment. And, what about when I can’t manage all the stuff I’m juggling now? How will I bear that? Who will be my Me?

What Benedict offers is hope. Someone bigger than Mom and me is buffing us each day, her far more than me, both in challenges and in sanctity, to use the technical term. I hope that someday I can come to resemble her, at least in part, a old piece of sterling silver, buffed and polished of much of its tarnish, but more beautiful because of the patina and depth of each of its creases.