The Watchmaker’s Daughter

'Time is relative'  

  My Dad would always say this to me.  

  He never professed to be a student of Einstein and for the longest time I felt that he simply said it to fit his character. A cliche of a sentence from the man who spent his life stooped over a desk, eye glass in hand; A Master Watchmaker squinting at the vast array of cogs, each refusing to move until he worked his magic.   

  And now he's gone. Leaving me to keep the business going. The skills he spent a lifetime learning, passed to me through a process of osmosis and the hours by his side.  

  My Mum would refer to us as the twins, before she walked out on us. A mother and daughter relationship is littered with quarrels and division, but I always felt a deep-seated jealousy from her: unable to understand the man she had married, whilst I was able to interpret him entirely without a word being spoken. You can spend an entire lifetime communicating and feel no closer than you did prior to the first word being spoken, as though you are hammering an iceberg with a pickaxe and not even making a mark. Then with someone else, after one conversation you feel an intimate connection, like your souls are bonded and nothing could ever extricate them from one another. This was not exactly the case with my parents, as childhood and parental relationships will always muddy the waters of memory, spitting out the more painful ones like a volcano coughing up volcanic ash, whilst the gleaming gems of our most treasured memories need to be searched for and unearthed from deep within the core.  

  I now seem to spend more time watching time pass, than I do using the skills and the craft that my Dad taught me. I could see it changing in his later years; the worry on his face when the accountant would make his annual visit; the empty cash register at the end of the day. He almost handed the family business to me with tinge of regret and remorse, knowing that he was giving me the gift of a sand clock with only a couple of grains yet to fall; with no sign of it reversing. There are times when I think about closing. When the holiday I hope for is unaffordable and the car I have run for fifteen years will have to last at least another year. I am still young, and time is on my side. Time has marched past us, the heralded Digital Age moving at a speed that we cannot contend with. The skills learned over multiple lifetimes becoming obsolete in the blink of an eye. 

  In the end I know that I will never walk away from this willingly. It’s been almost a year since I lost my Dad and I can no longer hear the sound of his voice in my mind. There are times when his image becomes hazy, and I need to look at a picture of him just to place all his features in the correct position. He would always tell me that life goes by so fast and in the blink of an eye your childhood becomes adulthood, which in turns often leads you experience someone else's childhood and their subsequent adulthood: the endless cycle that only stops when your own internal clock stops ticking. I am afraid of growing to resent the thing I love. Deep down I am still the little girl who wants to please her father and prove to her mother that she could do it. This thing we shared is my final connection to him and I am not ready to walk away from it, in some ways it would feel like all that time we spent together was wasted.  

  At the funeral I saw my Mum for the first time in 5 years. We had a stilted conversation, me grief stricken and her trying to reconnect with a daughter that she never connected with in the first place. We left as we arrived, as strangers: promising to keep in touch, but knowing that we wouldn't. Over time the anger of my Mum leaving us has faded; though the fire may be quelled the embers will never be extinguished. In the same way that the grief of losing my Dad has also subsided over time, but again I know that it will never fully heal. Each wound, an internal scar picked up from a lifetime of existence. We hope to get through this life unscathed, but we know deep down that there will be pain along the way, and we just hope that we can bear each cut and push on forwards; praying that the next blow that strikes us will be more bearable. 

  Deep down I know that I am not ready to walk away from this yet. My Father spent the time training his daughter to be a Master Watchmaker and I am not ready to end his legacy. In the future, perhaps I can find another way to preserve his legacy? Time is relative he would say and maybe I need to create some new life to share my time and his memories with. Legacy is a funny thing. Why do we often feel more protective over someone else's legacy than they would over their own? Perhaps it is just another way for us to try and make sure something matters, that who we were and what we did was not all in vain. In the end I guess as long as one person remembers then you are not really forgotten, and if a little bit of you remains in them, and they in turn are remembered, then the legacy continues passing through time, until we all make that great unknown voyage and the concept of time loses all meaning. 

  Leaning against the small, polished wooden counter, I glance at my watch, when the small antique bell above the door tinkles to signal the arrival of a customer. Placing my hands upon the counter I great them with a smile and know that Dad's legacy will continue for just a little bit longer.