Four years ago, I opened a birthday gift from my wife
I already knew what was inside.
A Tudor Black Bay Fifty-Eight Navy.
The watch wasn’t a surprise. We had picked it out together. The gift itself had been her idea.
I had fallen pretty hard into watches by then. She knew how much the hobby had come to mean to me and thought a watch would make a meaningful gift for both a milestone birthday and our wedding, which were less than two weeks apart.
The plan from the beginning was for me to wear it when we got married.
A few months earlier, we had finished our engagement photo shoot and decided to grab some food and look at watches. We were still dressed from the shoot.
I had two watches in mind: a blue Rolex Oyster Perpetual and the Tudor Black Bay Fifty-Eight Navy.
Seeing them side by side made the decision easier.
The Rolex was striking, but almost too formal for me. The Tudor was more understated and more versatile. The blue was beautiful, it felt better on my wrist, and we both thought it suited me better.
Just as importantly, it felt like a watch I would actually wear. I wouldn’t be reluctant to let it pick up the inevitable wear marks along the way.
We chose the Tudor.
I would wear it at our wedding. And when something mattered after that, I wanted this to be the watch I reached for.
A few months later, I opened the box again on my birthday.
Less than two weeks later, I wore it when we got married.
I remember putting it on that day and thinking that every time I wore it afterward, some small part of me would remember our wedding. I liked that idea. It made me smile.
In the couple of years that followed, the Tudor became the watch I reached for when an ordinary day felt a little more significant. Birthday dinners with my mom and wife. Date nights at the theater or a comedy show. A weekend away.
When we closed on our first house together, it was there too.
I remember having the same thought I’d had on our wedding day. Now this would be part of it too.
Then came our maternity photo shoot.
This felt different. Our wedding had marked the beginning of our family, and this was another major moment for it. There was never really a question about which watch I would wear.
A few months later, our daughter was here. We had newborn photos taken, and the Tudor was on my wrist again.
I can look back through photographs from some of the most important moments of our life together and find the same blue watch. Sometimes it’s prominent. Sometimes it’s barely noticeable. But it’s there.
I still reach for it the same way. I don’t have a list of occasions that require the Tudor. I just seem to know when I want it on my wrist.
Four years later, I haven’t changed my mind about the watch itself either.
It’s still my favorite watch to look at.
This was the first watch I really obsessed over, back when I barely knew what I was looking at. I knew I liked it before I really understood why.
I understand it better now, but the reasons haven’t changed much.
I love the weight of it. I love the way the clasp feels when I close it. And I still love that blue. It changes with the light, and after four years I still catch myself looking at it.
The versatility we saw in it that first day has held up too. I’ve worn it with a suit when the occasion called for one, but just as often with a polo or a sweater. It has turned out to be exactly the kind of watch we thought it would be.
I’ve seen and handled plenty of other watches since then, including some that are far more expensive and impressive.
I still want mine.
It has picked up some wear along the way.
There’s a mark on the clasp from my wife’s birthday dinner a couple of years ago. We were near the end of the meal when I shifted in my seat and felt, then heard, the clasp rub against the table.
I knew immediately what I had done.
The mark isn’t particularly bad, but I know it’s there. More importantly, I know exactly why it’s there.
At least dinner was good.
There will be more marks. I hope most of them are minor. I hope the watch keeps running well. And I hope that twenty or thirty years from now it still looks like the same watch, just one that has been worn for twenty or thirty more years.
I probably won’t remember where every mark came from. I don’t expect to remember every dinner, every weekend away or every occasion when I decided to put on the Tudor either.
I hope they keep accumulating.
Another birthday. Another trip. The milestones we know are coming and the ones we don’t.
Someday, I hope there are too many memories attached to this watch for any one of them to define it.
I hope I can put it on as an old man and remember pieces of a life that happened while I was wearing it. My wife. Our daughter. The places we went. The things we celebrated. The ordinary days that turned out not to be so ordinary after all.
Maybe by then, this watch will be a smile on my wrist. A sign of a life well lived.
It was there for the wedding. It was there when we bought our first house. It was there as our family grew.
And if I’m lucky, it’ll be there for a lot more.