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Dad’s Rolex: It’s just a watch. No big deal.
It’s just a watch. It’s no big deal.
It’s not an heirloom like I had imagined all these years. As it hung around my father’s wrist, I had mistaken it for something that, after he passed away, I would wear everyday for the rest of my life.
That’s what he said he intended.
I imagined it as something that would subsequently hang around my wrist as a constant, ever-present reminder of my father, my captain, my mentor and my friend.
When I die, I imagined, I would pass it on to one of my sons. It would be a fitting tribute to Rhea men – a classic, always-fashionable, ever-visible memorial to Dad and Rhea dads who were to come after him for following generations.
Silly me.
My father used to tease me about my watch, a Casio that looked strangely similar to his big, stainless Rolex Submariner 16610.
“When your watch grows up, it wants to be my watch,†he would tease. Sometimes he’d let me wear it for a few minutes.
He knew to me, his watch was a very big deal – not because it was a Rolex, but because it was his. It was super, super special. To me, the value of Dad’s Rolex was immeasurable.
But when Dad died, it turns out that, somehow, he’d left everything to my step-mother. Weird. So I made sure to tell her, on more that several occasions, that I would like to have Dad’s watch. When she said it was worth a lot of money and she needed to sell stuff, I understood. I asked that she let me know when she’s ready because I would like to have the opportunity to raise the five grand or so that she would get for it.
Silly me.
I found out today from an old, family friend that she already sold Dad’s Rolex, a few weeks ago, to some Internet watch dealer in Miami. I am mortified. I am heartbroken. I am baffled, confused and amazed.
Silly me.
It turns out that Dad’s stainless Rolex Submariner 16610 is no big deal after all. It’s not special. It’s just some item my step-mother hocked on the Internet. Who knew? The emotional and sentimental value of my father’s watch as an heirloom is in the eye of the beholder.
Silly me.
Much will be taken away
My father warned me of this. Things, he said, don’t define anything.
The latest test has been that of perception – this watch he once owned, which has now been stripped of its sentimental value and belongs to some Miami watch broker, is just a thing. It is a possession, the type of thing that he always railed against.
So often of Big Creek, our ancestral home, he said, “This place only has to outlast me.†That was all he was responsible for. It’s all we are responsible for.
The idea he drove home to me, over and over, is that life doesn’t promise you anything. Not a watch. Not a job. Not a wife. Not an ancestral plot of land. Life, just, is. Nothing more. It’s not depressive, it’s just the way it is. Our task is to make the best of it. It’s the way of my Scots-Irish ancestors who, hundreds of years ago, settled my little childhood homeland in Middle Tennessee – which will surely be raffled off to the highest bidder as well. Pain associated with this sort of loss lies only in the expectation that forms are, in any way, permanent. They are not – it’s the way of life itself. Dad made that clear, and so I understand his meaning.
Much will be taken away by those who make decisions with their own best interests in mind, he would say. “Then what? What is your contingency plan?†He said it so many times.
Those who don’t have “your story†in mind won’t worry much about your emotional needs, he told me. And the most important lesson – the lesson he gave me when I called to inform him I was getting engaged – was that every decade or so, life will completely change.
And so it does. As I launch off into my fourth decade of starts and fits, I take the lessons he offered to heart.
He always said, “Do it and it will be done.†I still struggle to understand what that means.
But I’m getting closer.
http://www.jdaverhea.com/dads-rolex-...h-no-big-deal/
It’s just a watch. It’s no big deal.
It’s not an heirloom like I had imagined all these years. As it hung around my father’s wrist, I had mistaken it for something that, after he passed away, I would wear everyday for the rest of my life.
That’s what he said he intended.
I imagined it as something that would subsequently hang around my wrist as a constant, ever-present reminder of my father, my captain, my mentor and my friend.
When I die, I imagined, I would pass it on to one of my sons. It would be a fitting tribute to Rhea men – a classic, always-fashionable, ever-visible memorial to Dad and Rhea dads who were to come after him for following generations.
Silly me.
My father used to tease me about my watch, a Casio that looked strangely similar to his big, stainless Rolex Submariner 16610.
“When your watch grows up, it wants to be my watch,†he would tease. Sometimes he’d let me wear it for a few minutes.
He knew to me, his watch was a very big deal – not because it was a Rolex, but because it was his. It was super, super special. To me, the value of Dad’s Rolex was immeasurable.
But when Dad died, it turns out that, somehow, he’d left everything to my step-mother. Weird. So I made sure to tell her, on more that several occasions, that I would like to have Dad’s watch. When she said it was worth a lot of money and she needed to sell stuff, I understood. I asked that she let me know when she’s ready because I would like to have the opportunity to raise the five grand or so that she would get for it.
Silly me.
I found out today from an old, family friend that she already sold Dad’s Rolex, a few weeks ago, to some Internet watch dealer in Miami. I am mortified. I am heartbroken. I am baffled, confused and amazed.
Silly me.
It turns out that Dad’s stainless Rolex Submariner 16610 is no big deal after all. It’s not special. It’s just some item my step-mother hocked on the Internet. Who knew? The emotional and sentimental value of my father’s watch as an heirloom is in the eye of the beholder.
Silly me.
Much will be taken away
My father warned me of this. Things, he said, don’t define anything.
The latest test has been that of perception – this watch he once owned, which has now been stripped of its sentimental value and belongs to some Miami watch broker, is just a thing. It is a possession, the type of thing that he always railed against.
So often of Big Creek, our ancestral home, he said, “This place only has to outlast me.†That was all he was responsible for. It’s all we are responsible for.
The idea he drove home to me, over and over, is that life doesn’t promise you anything. Not a watch. Not a job. Not a wife. Not an ancestral plot of land. Life, just, is. Nothing more. It’s not depressive, it’s just the way it is. Our task is to make the best of it. It’s the way of my Scots-Irish ancestors who, hundreds of years ago, settled my little childhood homeland in Middle Tennessee – which will surely be raffled off to the highest bidder as well. Pain associated with this sort of loss lies only in the expectation that forms are, in any way, permanent. They are not – it’s the way of life itself. Dad made that clear, and so I understand his meaning.
Much will be taken away by those who make decisions with their own best interests in mind, he would say. “Then what? What is your contingency plan?†He said it so many times.
Those who don’t have “your story†in mind won’t worry much about your emotional needs, he told me. And the most important lesson – the lesson he gave me when I called to inform him I was getting engaged – was that every decade or so, life will completely change.
And so it does. As I launch off into my fourth decade of starts and fits, I take the lessons he offered to heart.
He always said, “Do it and it will be done.†I still struggle to understand what that means.
But I’m getting closer.
http://www.jdaverhea.com/dads-rolex-...h-no-big-deal/
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