Watches are meant to be worn. You have probably heard that before and I am very much guilty of repeating that phrase multiple times. It is not to say that a watch cannot be a safe bound collectible, I mean there’s nothing wrong with that. Gerry: No, no, of course not! People's personal watch wearing preferences are nobody's business but their own! However, there’s more to this than just wearing it for the sake of wearing it.
Over the years, I have come to see my watches as talismans of our shared history. At any given moment, if I see an old picture of one of my watches, memories come flooding back. For example, a couple of weeks ago, someone posted a picture of an Omega 2254.50 (the black one that came out right after the Brosnan Bond model) on the Worn & Wound+ Slack Community and I immediately thought of the America’s Cup version (same watch, but with white gold bezel) I wore during the birth of my first child.
Felt like it was just yesterday, timing contractions on my
Omega and the anticipation of meeting my little man for the first time. Labor
was a lengthy thirty hours and wound up in an emergency c-section. Once the
nurse took my son from my arms and I was asked to leave the O-R, I was still in
a state of shock. I remember backing out into a side room and falling into a
bench frame that was missing the seat. There I was, no one else around, I was
stuck and so overjoyed, crying and I looked at my watch. It was 4:30pm on Jan 4th,
2002. Happiest day of my life.
After this event, I had vowed to have a chronograph, should I ever find myself in the same position again. Timing contractions with a dive bezel was challenging. Fast-forward two years later and I was racing to the hospital with my wife, sporting a Credor Phoenix time only watch. Go figure, the horological Gods were playing a joke on me. Not even a timing bezel this time! Not that I would need one, this time it was only 45-minutes and voila, my second micro-dude was brought into the world.
Even though I do not own either of these watches anymore, the memories associated to them will always make me smile. This is why I started my Instagram page. Not to gather followers, or get watch news, but to catalogue my journey through watches. This way, I could scroll down and as I see my collection ever changing, I can remember the good and bad times I had while wearing those watches. Like the time I found out my father-in-law had cancer, on the same day I received my Omega Planet Ocean 8500. Or when my mother passed away in January of 2018. I was wearing an Omega Seamaster 300 when I was cleaning out her apartment and got a pretty big scratch on its clasp while moving some furniture.
Our watches follow us everywhere and are worn more
consistently than any piece of clothing. Some of us even wear them to sleep and
we stare at them incessantly, sometimes without even noticing the time. While I
truly admire the craftsmanship, the details, the accuracy, and the precision of
watches, it is the memories I have built into them, as life passes by, that I
love the most. Allow me to offer one more recent story.
In September of 2019, just as the school year was starting
up again, I wanted to take the family on one last small trip to mark the
transition from summer break to the grind of the school year. I was trying to
find some place not too far away and something he had never done before. That
is when Google steered me to Mont-Mégantic dark sky preserve and its
observatory at the top of the mountain. I have always been an astronomy fan and
I figured the kids would really get a kick of seeing the night sky away from
the city’s light pollution.
So, I booked tickets and a quaint bed and breakfast at the
base of the mountain. On the Friday at the end of my boys’ first week of school
we set off. We picked up the kids from school and started our 3-hour trek to
Mont- Mégantic. We did not tell the kids where we were going. They were so excited
but were really getting puzzled the further and further we got from Montreal. By
the time we had picked up McDonald’s for supper and got within the dark sky
preserve they were starting to get worried. Why are there no streetlights and
why are some of the house lights red and pointing downwards?
When we got to the base of the mountain, I popped the trunk and told the kids to suit up. All our winter weather gear was in there. The temperature difference from the base to the peak was 10 degrees C and the observatory scope was open to the elements, as the scope’s lenses would/could fog up if there was a temperature difference between the outside and inside. That is when I told them where we were and why we were there. Their eyes lit up and they were so happy. I guess all those years of listening to the Star Talk Podcast with me must have ignited some curiosity.
We got very, very lucky with this trip. Not only was it a
clear night with no clouds, but it was also a Moonless night, which meant that
we could see even more. It had been a long time since I had seen the sky this
way, not since my childhood in the scouts and the rest of my family had never
seen the milky way with their own eyes, in the open sky. It was even more
impressive than I remember. There was barely any black in the sky, just white
dots everywhere.
There was an astronomer there, with a laser pointer,
explaining what we were looking at outside. Jupiter, some of its moons and
Saturn were easily visible to the naked eye. They have a large telescope
outside, on the ground that we could take turns looking through and then inside
the observatory, we could climb the stairs and look through the giant scope. It
is one thing seeing Saturn and Jupiter online and in books, it is an entirely
different experience seeing them through a scope, clearly. We spent hours
there.
Much later that night, sitting up in my bed at the B&B,
talking with my family about what we had just witnessed. My Omega Railmaster
was resting on my lap. I could not help but feel blessed to have shared this
incredible experience with my family. The next morning, we visited the even
larger research scope at the very top of the mountain, the one reserved for
university scientists and then made our way back home.
That Railmaster meant a lot to me, until I was the victim of
a Watchuseek.com scam and it wound up in the hands of an Icelandic thief, but
that is a story for another day. My point is wear your watches, enjoy them,
allow them to accompany you through life’s adventures. Put some scratches and
bumps on them. Build in your memories, just like Blake Buettner’s Rolex
Submariner reminds him of his son’s sporting events and recently Chris Antzoulis wrote a terrific piece about his friend’s pocket watch and how it got
him out of a funk.
Watches are meant to be worn. Wear them!
