His father had wanted his family to be as timeless as the home he had constructed for them.
Ten years before, when the sections of wood latticework that formed the face of the porch began rotting due to contact with the dampness of the soil, his Mother had had a contractor replace the fronting with preformed plastic lattice. The contractor had also replaced the columns on either side of the porch with non-rotting plastic-based columns, so the illusion of non-change was perfect. The agelessness of the recently painted and incredibly tough maple shiplap siding as well as the restoration of the well-designed porch made it impossible for Thomas to tell if the Earth’s clock had advanced a minute for his mother’s house since he was five. Only the crumbling cement of the walkway gave him any clue that time had its effects at his parental home.