Let’s admit it: for all our busyness, for all our calendars groaning under the weight of  importance, we rarely get around to doing the things that matter. Even the relatively  fortunate live as if fulfillment were a distant country—one we keep meaning to visit  once the emails are cleared, the meetings are over, the laundry folded, and the fourth  tab of an internet rabbit hole finally closed. We carry a vague itch, a quiet  restlessness—the sense that our time could be better spent if only we knew what to dedicate it to. 

A bit like the World War pilot who knows he should be kissing his wife’s forehead a  little longer than the manual allows—but instead leaves to scan the barren skies for  enemy aircraft.  

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They say she painted the chronograph pusher on his watch while he slept. A single  dot of red nail polish. Not for function but to remind him of what truly mattered. So  that when he looked down in the cockpit—mid-flight, mid-mission, mid-silence—he  would see it. And remember her. And, perhaps, come back. 

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The legend lives on in Hanhart’s red pusher. But really, it lives anywhere love has left  a quiet mark. 

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*** 

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I borrowed a watch from my aunt when I was eleven. Or twelve.  

A dainty Titan with a gold-toned case. The kind of watch meant to slip quietly under  a set of bangles, not sit awkwardly on the wrist of a nervous schoolboy walking into  an examination hall. It felt impossibly small on me. Almost fragile. And yet, I wore it.  For luck, perhaps. Or comfort. Or maybe it was because there’s something oddly  reassuring about carrying a piece of someone else’s quiet life with you when walking  into a room full of hard questions. 

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That, too, was a kind of a love letter. Not romantic. Not dramatic. Just a small act of care disguised as timekeeping. 

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*** 

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Years later, someone I love wore my watch. Just for a few days. Long enough for the  clasp to remember her wrist and for the dial to catch the light differently. It’s my watch again now. But some mornings, when I wear it, it feels like it’s still moving to a rhythm that isn’t entirely mine. A reminder of her wrist. A residue of her hours. 

That’s the thing with mechanical watches. They don’t just run on motion. They run on the simple act of wearing them. On mundanity. On coffee sips and deep sighs. On lived days — joys, sorrows, stillness, laughter. So, when I wear the watch now, I wonder what parts of 

her day still hum under the caseback. What thoughts did she have while it ticked? What silences did she share with it? What memories are wound up in the spring? 

Maybe that’s what intimacy is. Not possession. Not performance. Just the sharing of  something ordinary, like time, until it becomes quietly sacred.  

A love letter, if there ever was one. 

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And then I think of my son. How he used to turn the bezel on my dive watches when  he was younger. Quietly. Casually. Like it was a toy. As if perfect alignment was  something to be scoffed at. Whenever he sat in my lap, he would leave the markers  askew.  

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At the time, I’d fix it reflexively. I wanted time to line up. For everything to be exact. 

But now that he is grown up from that stage, I miss that tiny act of mischief. That gentle disorder. Maybe love isn’t about getting everything right. Maybe it’s about letting someone move the bezel, just a little off and not minding at all. 

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*** 

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We mark what we love.  

A dot of red nail paint.  

A dainty Titan slipped onto a schoolboy’s wrist.  

Gears wound with someone else’s breath.  

A dive bezel turned ever so slightly askew. 

We don’t always say what we mean. We don’t always write the letters we want to  write. But we adjust the strap. We wind the crown. We leave a watch behind.  

And sometimes, if we’re lucky, it keeps ticking in our absence.

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