Page 62 - Nuts to You - The Nutcracker Retold

Time and Again
Now, we’ve been hearing the name of Clara off and on, but we’ve never actually met Clara. She’s like one of those people everyone talks about, but no one really knows. Fortunately, we’re at that place in our story where we are at the Stahlbaum house, which actually, is a rather grand, old- fashioned house. It’s old-fashioned because our story takes place several centuries ago. Did I forget to tell you this? Well, in the Land of Sweets time is really not important, and even though there is a clock, it is broken and probably wouldn’t work anyway, because the Land of Sweets is a land where time is forgotten, ignored and generally of no use at all.
But in Clara’s house – which happens to be in a small hamlet in the mountains on the German-Dutch border – time ruled supreme. From the moment she was born, the time duly noted on both her birth certificate and in the family records, the clock governed her life. As an infant, feedings were exactly every three hours, and nap and bedtimes precisely enforced. As a child, there was no lying abed. Even on Saturday mornings, she must be up, dressed, with fingernails clean and ears washed, in time to be presented to her father before he was off to his clinic.
48