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Final summer season, Uncle Jeff got here to city and thudded an previous Ziploc on the desk. “Introduced a few of your dad’s previous stuff,” he declared. A single hand hovered over the bag. “Received it out of your aunt.” Within the thirty years since my father was killed in motion, many comparable baggage and bins have been handed over. Over time, the cracked Rubbermaid containers stacked as much as my attic’s rafters, a quarter-inch of mud crowning their historic lids. However each field of Dad’s previous stuff was a thrill to open. Every produced new mysteries, reminiscences, oddities… Greater than as soon as, I pulled a sword from a field.
However by no means a watch.
As a middling author with a extreme watch behavior, that at all times damage; No story on this area is extra alluring or sturdy than “Dad’s Previous Watch.” It is virtually narrative bedrock. Normally the trope begins when an interviewer, smoothing over these first-question jitters, underhands a softball over residence plate. “So how’d you get into watches?”
“Nicely, dad was a business diver within the Philippines…” predictably follows, and the interviewee drapes a battered 1680 Submariner onto the desk, and off goes the story at a gallop. Amen. Certain, the Dad’s-Watch Trope at all times warmed my coronary heart a bit, however largely it flared up a pointy sort of ache like once you’ve held on to lit kindling too lengthy.
“What did you and Dad rise up to?”
Jim Kinard was one of the best shot on the power, a licensed MP5 teacher (backside), and by no means missed an opportunity to backflip his son.
At the very least it did. Proper up till that second when Uncle Jeff slapped that bulging Ziploc on the desk. I eyed the bag for a beat, then pushed round its contents in that senseless manner you pet the previous household canine. My Uncle chatted concerning the cousins and the grandkids, and my Aunt smiled in her heat manner. After a sip of espresso, my wandering fingertips froze in opposition to the wrinkled polyethylene. My coronary heart did a bit kickflip. There on the fringe of the bag it sat. A gold watch. I sped residence and hovered a lamp over the middle of my workbench. Rigorously, like Indy pulling a relic from some historic stained material, I freed a long time of expectation from the Ziploc.
There it sat, a lump of gold-tone nostalgia on my workbench. Dad’s Watch. Lastly. The Seiko was spotless, breathless even, its pristine gold case damaged solely by strips of darkish distinction the place its curves creased alongside neatly beveled edges. Beneath the recent gentle, I popped every spring bar with a Monk’s devotion, taking care so the ends would not mar the lugs’ internal floor. The screwdown caseback wriggled free with a little bit of prying from my smallest screwdriver. A brand new coin cell battery changed the previous, and the Seiko motion danced to life.
The Seiko spent the waning summer season welded to my wrist. As pages on the calendar turned like falling leaves, the watch caught agency. I eliminated it solely to bathe or bathe my son. Even then, it sat moderately appropriately on the quartz-crystal countertop close by, dealing with us each, ticking cheerily. It thrilled me to sport one thing my dad really wore, as a substitute of, you already know… hauling round a sword. I misplaced my dad once I was simply 5, and treasured few reminiscences have survived the years since. Right here was a bit piece of him to hold with me. One thing actual. On uncommon nights out when my spouse and I escaped the home, she’d rise up from the restaurant desk to clean up, and I might roll up my shirtsleeve and stare down on the Seiko.
Silently, I might ask it, “What did you and Dad rise up to?“
By winter, when the sky had hung its damp gray cloak over Seattle, the watch hadn’t let slip any secrets and techniques. I felt thrilled to have the watch, however its thriller gnawed at me. One weekend evening, I cracked open a beer and climbed the wobbly aluminum ladder up into the attic. I ducked towards the bins as rain drummed in opposition to the roof above. By way of the crumbling Rubbermaids I dug, spreading out classic Kodak images by the hundred. There have been these early joyous birthdays. My new bike. So many smiles. Dad with our canine, his Okay-9 accomplice Rowdy, however zero proof of the previous gold Seiko. The watch was positively Dad’s, but it surely wasn’t Dad’s Watch. It gave the impression to be an afterthought in his personal life.
Lounging (ideally with a chilly one) was and is a Kinard household pastime.
I sat in silence for a minute and sipped my beer whereas the rain fell staccato on the roof. Then I closed all of the lids and slid the bins again to the slim nook of the attic the place the slat-wood ground meets the angled roofline. For years, the Dad’s-Watch Trope had constructed an expectation. “If I ever discover dad’s watch,” I believed, “it’s going to all click on again into place.” I might get one thing again, I believed, a way that he was nearer than all these years. As an alternative, I discovered that very same boring ache I might at all times recognized. Folks assume it will get simpler, dwelling with the ache, but it surely does not. It solely will get additional away. “Shit occurs” was certainly one of my dad’s oft-repeated phrases, I am informed, and it is allowed me to let numerous issues go in life. “Guess that just about sums it up, Dad,” I laughed to myself.
I climbed down from the rafters and tucked the Seiko into the again of my desk drawer. On the event I’ve to stuff my head by the opening of a costume shirt, I fish out the gold watch. However that is not typically anymore. I make money working from home and am a father to a toddler lately—normally each without delay—which suggests my shirts do not have collars anymore. Normally, they’re of the “tee” selection, stuffed with tiny holes on the collar, and largely coated in cottage cheese stains. Fatherhood reinforces many such classes about pragmatism; I merely need to be my son’s father and to do it higher than something I’ve ever accomplished. Nothing extra.
So most days, a fuss-free blacked-out G-Shock does the trick—no must take it off for bathtub time. Plus, the cottage cheese wipes proper off. Father’s Day is pretty much as good a time as any to do not forget that Dad’s Watch does not possess intrinsic worth past the “watch” half in that equation. Whether or not it is a Patek, Rolex, or Timex, “Dad’s Watch” is all about shared reminiscence; That is the stuff solely a father can carry to the equation.
The previous Seiko taught me that.
Dad and ‘Ninji,’ our black lab (proper). I am nonetheless in search of that previous Casio (at left)
Now, once I catch a golden flash of that watch within the corridor mirror—normally whereas chasing a laughing working boy—it is a reminder that, nevertheless a lot time I’ve left chasing my son, each second has actual which means.
My dad taught me that.
For my son, I pray for a joyful life. No matter’s left of my time on earth, it is my accountability—proper now—to construct that life for him, to forge a connection price remembering, and to cross alongside love, empathy, and kindness. If I’ve accomplished my job proper, when the time lastly involves unlatch that Seiko from my very own wrist and affix it to his, it will not merely be “a watch that dad wore” however “Dad’s Watch,” certainly.
Completely happy Father’s Day.
