I’ve been getting interested more and more about wristwatches, beginning with the LL. Bean field watch I got for Christmas 25 years ago to the Ollech & Wacjs diver I rescued from the Mildew House and repaired last year. I’m pretty finicky with the look and feel of my watches, like everything else, but I tend to favor military field-type watches and some basic diver models, but nothing too overdone or oversized for my relatively small wrist. Mostly by accident, the two “expensive” watches I own are mechanical–I wind them every day. At first I found this annoying but over time I’ve come to enjoy and appreciate the idiosyncrasies of each individual watch through their care and feeding. My Hamilton likes 12 full winds. The O&W likes about 20, but loses 4 minutes every 24 hours. Each has a date display, but the O&W only has a single adjustment on the post, which means I have to advance the watch through 24 hours to advance the date one day. It’s a pain in the ass, but it has character. I love the way they both look and feel, and I’ll never stop wearing them.
Meanwhile, I’ve kept an eye on the Apple Watch, wondering if I’d ever need something like it, and if it would ever get to the size where it didn’t look like a plasma TV strapped to my arm. I’ve been told they are life-changing when actually worn, and I’m sure they’re nifty but I haven’t been able to justify the cost to this point. I’ve had a FitBit on my Amazon list for months but haven’t made the leap to that technology yet either–even though the price to entry is much lower.
When I was up in Syracuse the first weekend, Renie offered me the FitBit she’d bought my father for Christmas, still in its original packaging. With a little apprehension I opened the box and strapped it on my wrist the morning I helped my Mom clean Dad’s clothes out the closets and move stuff around the basement. Imagine my surprise that evening when it told me I’d done 8,000 steps and 12 flights of stairs that day. Meanwhile, it was buzzing on my wrist as I got texts from the family. I started getting detailed reports as to my sleep habits (conclusion: I’m not getting enough) and it’s interesting to see what my heart rate is after different activities. For a fledgling data nerd like me, it’s fascinating to be tracking and comparing this stuff.
Overall I like it a lot, even though I miss my mechanical watches for everyday use. I’m going to cycle through them more as I’ve been doing–January was a heavy O&W month, while December was mostly Hamilton–and mix the FitBit in more.
And, even though he never wore it, I’ll think of my Dad when I check my steps–and make sure I stay healthy.
Here’s what the new wall tile looks like in the bathroom. Brian has the front window blocked off so you can’t really get the daylight on it yet, but it looks beautiful to me.
Yesterday the family gathered back in Aurora for my father’s service, at the church across the street from their old house (that was weird). My sister, mother and I all got up and said a few words about my Dad. Here’s what I wrote:
I spent a lot of time this week going through our family pictures for the viewing, and I was struck by how different and how healthy my Dad looked twenty, or even ten years ago.
A lot of us might think of him as the hunched over guy with the hoses and oxygen machine. For some of us, that’s the only Bill we knew. But it wasn’t always like that.
I hope you were able to look at some of those pictures and remember the guy I do: the tall, V-necked, farmer-tanned Bill, who never ran out of energy and always seemed to be moving.
He was the guy who stuck a camper on the back of a flatbed truck and drove the family across the country during the month of August. You might think this was no big deal, but: This truck was a manual and had no air conditioning. It’s a miracle my Mom stayed married to him.
He was the guy who taught Renie and I how to hang drywall, shingle a roof, pour concrete, chop firewood, grow a garden, and pick locks.
Even though we were the ones sanding, picking up the shingles and throwing them in the truck, mixing the concrete, hauling the firewood, and weeding the garden at 7 in the morning.
He was a generation behind most of my friends’ parents so he wasn’t a hippie. he was kind of a square. I didn’t learn how to relate emotionally from him. If I had a problem with my friends or got my feelings hurt, I talked to my Mom. But I did want to be better at that stuff than he was for my daughter, and that might have been the most valuable lesson he taught me.
As I got older, I started relating to him on a different level. He was surprised, but he rolled with it, to his credit. Old dogs can learn, in their own way, on their own time.
So in your mind, try to replace the guy with the tanks and the stoop with the tall, farmer tanned guy in the floppy yellow hat and beard. Thank you all for coming.
