The Father’s Day Timepiece

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On Father’s Day, I hold the wristwatch—a stain­less steel Bell & Ross—and notice the delayed clicks of the white sec­ond hand. My thumb moves in cir­cu­lar motions across the water­proof glass. I’m sur­prised by its weight.

Erik, my 29-year-old hus­band, pleaded with me for this expen­sive watch, but I said, “You know we can’t afford that right now.” We were sav­ing money to buy our first house in over-priced Marin County, California.

“Hyla, he’s going to give it to me for one-third the cost.”

Oh, Erik. “Why do I have to be the one who has to say no?”

Erik put me in charge of our finances after he’d accepted that his impetu­ous spend­ing habits weren’t help­ing us save. We were newly preg­nant with our sec­ond daugh­ter, and mov­ing from one rental house to the next was get­ting old.

Erik bought the watch anyway.

Then he had the nerve to jus­tify his pur­chase by telling me he’d sold some com­puter equip­ment. Why did he need that watch? I wasn’t tot­ing around designer purses. The fight blew over quickly, as most of our dis­agree­ments did, and the watch became a play­ful joke between us.

He liked to spend money. But nobody could deny that Erik was a phe­nom­e­nal father. Every day, when he came home from work, he’d swing our daugh­ter, Tatiana, into the air and say, “You are the rea­son for my exis­tence.” Dur­ing my preg­nan­cies, not an evening passed when Erik didn’t rub almond but­ter all over my ripe belly. “Sexy curves,” he’d say.

He was an excep­tional hus­band, always help­ing me with my writ­ing, my pho­tog­ra­phy busi­ness, and doing more house­work and errands than I ever did. Any­way, isn’t mar­riage just an exer­cise in see­ing the per­fec­tion in each other’s imperfections?

Erik wore that watch when he ran, when he show­ered, and when he lugged com­put­ers around at work.

And, when he was only 29, my beloved Erik was still wear­ing that watch when Tatiana and I heard him take his last breath.

Heart attack.

The funeral passed, then Keira’s birth, and through lay­ers of grief, I sobbed from a place I didn’t know existed.

Even­tu­ally Evan came along. Evan—the hand­some, Stan­ford MBA, Iron­man athlete—didn’t run out the door when he met Keira and Tatiana for the first time. He didn’t flee. One month after we met, Evan rode his moun­tain bike up Mt. Tamal­pais and asked Erik’s per­mis­sion to care for me and the girls.

Evan has taken over for Erik, but Evan makes sure we talk about “Daddy Erik” every day. “If I died, I’d be incred­i­bly bummed if you didn’t keep my mem­ory alive,” Evan says.

Through Erik, we remem­ber life in greater detail. We remem­ber the but­ter­flies that flew over our heads as Evan and I exchanged wed­ding vows, we remem­ber the excite­ment in the court­room when Evan legally adopted the girls, and we remem­ber, each day, how blessed we are to now have four mag­nif­i­cent children.

On Father’s Day, I squish my lips against the black face of Erik’s watch, tuck it in to an ivory-lined box, and tape the folded turquoise wrap­ping paper along the sides.

Erik wants Evan to have his watch.

Clos­ing my eyes, I imag­ine what Erik would say, and I begin writ­ing a let­ter from Erik to Evan, which finally reads:

“There are things I would have changed about my 29 years, and I know that you and Hyla will have your own bumps along the road. I also know there will be times that you strug­gle to nav­i­gate the path of rais­ing girls. There is no doubt in my mind that you will do a phe­nom­e­nal job. That, you have already proven.

What I really want to say is thank you. Thank you for tak­ing over—for want­ing to take over. I chose you to take care of my girls, and my wife, because what I saw in you was the abil­ity to be the most nur­tur­ing father and lov­ing, sup­port­ive hus­band. You are one stel­lar man—anyone who knows you will vouch for that.

Evan, what I am about to give you, I am not sure you will even want to wear. It’s cool with me if you choose to leave it in a drawer, to pull out only on the occa­sion that you feel the desire to look at it, to be reminded that the time is now—the time is always now.

Happy Father’s Day, from one father to another. You deserve the great­est life. Don’t for­get to take it. Take life. Breathe it all in.”