There Is Only Time

But never a watch.

As a middling writer with a severe watch habit, that always hurt; No tale in this space is more alluring or durable than "Dad's Old Watch." It's practically narrative bedrock. Usually the trope starts when an interviewer, smoothing over those first-question jitters, underhands a softball over home plate. "So how'd you get into watches?" 

"Well, dad was a commercial diver in the Philippines..." predictably follows, and the interviewee drapes a battered 1680 Submariner onto the table, and off goes the story at a gallop. Amen. Sure, the Dad's-Watch Trope always warmed my heart a bit, but mostly it flared up a sharp kind of pain like when you've held on to lit kindling too long.

At least it did. Right up until that moment when Uncle Jeff slapped that bulging Ziploc on the table. I eyed the bag for a beat, then pushed around its contents in that mindless way you pet the old family dog. My Uncle chatted about the cousins and the grandkids, and my Aunt smiled in her warm way. After a sip of coffee, my wandering fingertips froze against the wrinkled polyethylene. My heart did a little kickflip. There at the edge of the bag it sat. A gold watch. I sped home and hovered a lamp over the center of my workbench. Carefully, like Indy pulling a relic from some ancient stained cloth, I freed decades of expectation from the Ziploc.

There it sat, a lump of gold-tone nostalgia on my workbench. Dad's Watch. Finally. The Seiko was spotless, breathless even, its pristine gold case broken only by strips of dark contrast where its curves creased along neatly beveled edges. Under the hot light, I popped each spring bar with a Monk's devotion, taking care so the ends wouldn't mar the lugs' inner surface. The screwdown caseback wriggled free with a bit of prying from my smallest screwdriver. A new coin cell battery replaced the old, and the Seiko movement danced to life.

The Seiko spent the waning summer welded to my wrist. As pages on the calendar turned like falling leaves, the watch stuck firm. I removed it only to shower or bathe my son. Even then, it sat rather appropriately on the quartz-crystal countertop nearby, facing us both, ticking cheerily. It thrilled me to sport something my dad actually wore, instead of, you know… hauling around a sword. I lost my dad when I was just five, and precious few memories have survived the years since. Here was a little piece of him to carry with me. Something real. On rare nights out when my wife and I escaped the house, she'd get up from the restaurant table to freshen up, and I'd roll up my shirtsleeve and stare down at the Seiko.

Silently, I'd ask it, "What did you and Dad get up to?"

By winter, when the sky had hung its damp grey cloak over Seattle, the watch hadn't let slip any secrets. I felt thrilled to have the watch, but its mystery gnawed at me. One weekend night, I cracked open a beer and climbed the wobbly aluminum ladder up into the attic. I ducked toward the boxes as rain drummed against the roof above. Through the crumbling Rubbermaids I dug, spreading out vintage Kodak photos by the hundred. There were those early joyous birthdays. My new bike. So many smiles. Dad with our dog, his K-9 partner Rowdy, but zero evidence of the old gold Seiko. The watch was definitely Dad's, but it wasn't Dad's Watch. It appeared to be an afterthought in his own life.

I sat in silence for a minute and sipped my beer while the rain fell staccato on the roof. Then I closed all the lids and slid the boxes back to the narrow corner of the attic where the slat-wood floor meets the angled roofline. For years, the Dad's-Watch Trope had built an expectation. "If I ever find dad's watch," I thought, "it'll all click back into place." I'd get something back, I thought, a sense that he was closer than all those years. Instead, I found that same dull ache I'd always known. People think it gets easier, living with the pain, but it doesn't. It only gets further away. "Shit happens" was one of my dad's oft-repeated phrases, I'm told, and it's allowed me to let a lot of things go in life. "Guess that pretty much sums it up, Dad," I laughed to myself.

I climbed down from the rafters and tucked the Seiko into the back of my desk drawer. On the occasion I have to stuff my head through the hole of a dress shirt, I fish out the gold watch. But that's not often anymore. I work from home and am a father to a toddler these days—usually both at once—which means my shirts don't have collars anymore. Usually, they're of the "tee" variety, full of tiny holes on the collar, and mostly covered in cottage cheese stains. Fatherhood reinforces many such lessons about pragmatism; I simply want to be my son's father and to do it better than anything I've ever done. Nothing more.

So most days, a fuss-free blacked-out G-Shock does the trick—no need to take it off for bath time. Plus, the cottage cheese wipes right off. Father's Day is as good a time as any to remember that Dad's Watch doesn't possess intrinsic value beyond the "watch" part in that equation. Whether it's a Patek, Rolex, or Timex, "Dad's Watch" is all about shared memory; That's the stuff only a father can bring to the equation.

The old Seiko taught me that.

Now, when I catch a golden flash of that watch in the hall mirror—usually while chasing a giggling running boy—it's a reminder that, however much time I have left chasing my son, every second has real meaning.

My dad taught me that.

For my son, I pray for a joyful life. Whatever's left of my time on earth, it's my responsibility—right now—to build that life for him, to forge a connection worth remembering, and to pass along love, empathy, and kindness. If I've done my job right, when the time finally comes to unlatch that Seiko from my own wrist and affix it to his, it won't simply be "a watch that dad wore" but "Dad's Watch," indeed.

Happy Father's Day.