Brandon

I’ve always been fascinated by watches as legacy items. Objects that can contain within them memories to be passed down. Coming from a family that had nothing to pass down to me generationally, I fell in love with the romantic notion of starting this family tradition, such that some day my grandchildren may look at a watch handed down to them and think about the man I may have been. After years upon years of saving, I was still a long ways away from buying my first luxury watch, when long story short, my grandmother gifted me with an Omega Aqua Terra that she saw me clearly gawking at, urging me to continue saving my own money anyway for the sake of my financial stability. Yeah, best grandma ever. Months went by and something I continued to question was why on earth I fell so hard for a blue dial watch that barely matches my mostly black wardrobe.

Since returning home, you can imagine how many times I’ve called my grandmother spontaneously to thank her for the gift. This then led to many conversations about the watch itself, and some funny coincidences that we have found since. Turns out that my grandmother had intended to gift my father an Omega just a couple of short years prior. Pivoting instead to a different idea, this never ended up being the case, however it was this exact Omega Aqua Terra that she had printed out pictures of, intending on gifting it to her own son.

My grandmother’s main watch is a blue dialed Rado that she bought somewhere in East Asia, on one of her many adventures. It was the same piece she was wearing when I got my blue dialed AT.

Now, every time I stare down at the beautiful blue dial of my watch, I think about the many moments and decisions that led to that moment. I think about all of the invisible lines that connect the branches of a family tree. I think about whether a love of blue dials just runs in my blood. Mostly, I think about my grandmother, and how she gave me the gift of realizing a childhood dream far sooner than I ever thought I would. It is a reminder that now that this dream has been achieved, I best get started on making the others a reality, and you can wager that I’ll have this watch on my wrist for most of the journey, absorbing every scratch and memory along the way.