I had always wondered why people put so much significance on the family, or on a family tree for that matter. I never wanted to be attached to the people around me. Since the moment I became self aware, I have always striven to be independent. I viewed family as a prison from which one should escape. It’s not that I hated my family members, but I hated the idea of the obvious obligation that came with that “job.” The thought of tying my emotion to some other member sounded to me like an accident waiting to happen. How can one depend on another to insure him from wrong judgment? I found emotion a burden.
I have always associated family with agony and deformation. Deformation as in wrong feelings of belonging, the continuous need to explain why and from where, the over and over self-biting of the past. Whenever I said or did something, there was always someone to connect me to the collective past of the Jews. “You have to go to the army, they protected you when you were young; now, it’s your turn.” “They, the “goyem” don’t like us; remember the holocaust; don’t mingle.” I wanted nothing to do with that. I wanted to be part of the new world, the one United States so proudly waved her flags. I want to be judged for what I am, not my parents, not my nation, and not my religion. I am nothing but what I am.
Three years ago when I went back home to meet my family, my father said half jokingly that he was sitting down to write his will and he wondered if I wanted something “special” from him, not knowing that years ago I had set my mind to ask for something. It was in my father’s penthouse on one of the most central streets of Israel. His apartment was designed in good taste: modern Italian, colors in rich wood of full bloom, like the colors of a peach skin. Without thinking, I answered him in my old fashioned way that I did not want anything from him, just the old watch that stopped working years before I was part of the family. I said I wanted it as a symbolic souvenir, again demonstrating my need to be self-efficient.
My father, who was then in his late 50’s, or, maybe his early 60’s,God knows with all this unnecessary information that comes with this unfortunate bug called family… said that he first needed to check the value of the watch, and would call upon me. He said it the way he used to say everything, so calm and with a tone that fit one declaring he had lunch or maybe one going down to buy milk. I think just twice in my life, or maybe was it three times, no; no ten times that he lost his temper, I think.
When I was young and the concept of education not yet settled in my mind, I tried to find reasons to stay home and skip a day of school. I’m sure my mom was worried sick that her son was terminally ill, or so I want to believe. The idea of her knowing of my pretending sick play gives me the chills even today. The chill is not from my being so bluntly a bad actor, but from the fact that my parents thought it was OK for me to lose a day of school. I still cannot make up my mind if it was the right choice; thank goodness, I did not need to make this decision.
With time on my hands during these morning hours, which I spent by myself at home, I looked for things to occupy me. One of my favorite things to do was to look for things that my parents hid from us, the kids. The problem was that as much as I looked for hidden objects or secrets, I never found one. Maybe because I did not search well, or maybe just because my parents never found a reason to hide things. My parents never hid their money, keys, or even candies. What’s the point of eating all the chocolate if it is just sitting there? I was sure there was a better prize hiding in one of the cabinets, after all, it can’t be what it seems to be; I learned that from my school friends. Every time I went to their houses, we found ourselves searching for secret treasures.
But since in my case things were different, I always found myself in the end going through my mother’s jewelry box, a inlaid wood box with veneer colored squares that my grandfather probably made for my mother in her youth. It looked like a chess box, just one with not enough squares to play the game. It had no smell beside the smell of standing air, and the only thing I remember about it was that I hated the green velvet fabric that was lying inside the box; such a wonderful rich red orange color wood and inside like a worm in an apple sat the ugly green velvet. I guess my sense of design was already developing then. Actually, the real reason I hated the damn cloth was because it moved around as it was not attached correctly and I was afraid I would be discovered in my “underground mission.”
My mother’s jewelry never interested me, but among these silver and gold rings, earrings and endless beads, I found my father’s watch. Leather strip that the color black fades from, gold rings with numbers on them and four sets of dials in it. It had five buttons, and the most important was not working. I don’t think I ever saw it working, even after my endless tries to turn one or another button, hoping for it to do me justice and work.
The time was when the first electronic calculator watches came to the market and it was the favorite birthday present for anyone of my friends’ age. We all dreamed of using it secretly in a math test. My father’s watch was an analog watch with special gold rings that if you played them right could calculate and multiply simple equations. That’s why I was playing with it so many times. I was trying to “break the code.” My father more than once tried to let me in on the secret, but somehow I always forgot it. I thought that watch to be the saver of all my math problems; it was priceless since I knew no teacher could tell I was cheating.


- “Sit down, I said."
- “But grandpa, I have been doing it for the last three hours; I will never get it right.”
- “Eight multiplied by eight is?”
- “ Mmm...”
- “Come on, you were doing so good.”
- “It’s… fifty seven? Five…?
- “Mmm…”
- “It’s... sixteen and sixteen it’s thirty six, thirty six and thirty six... I can't…”
- “OK, go play, we’ll continue tomorrow…”


I did not pay much attention to learning in those days. I always looked for the fast way out; I think I still do so today. I have to say that I loved my grandfather like I did no other person in my life. There was something special about him, like no other grownup around me. He had so many talents: he was a composer, a singer, and a mathematician; He never raised his voice, and he was as calm as the Pacific Ocean on a quiet low breeze summer day. He was long and slim from the time I remembered him, and that was already after he became sick. My father said that my grandfather used to be on the curved side, like he is. Well, I don’t believe him, well I do, but I prefer him slim and long. So that’s how he was!
I remember three years later when my mother came to my room to wake me up, telling me she had bad news, she said that my grandfather, David, had passed away. She hugged me, and I remember that, while hugging her thinking that I was supposed to cry, so I did. She said, "It’s ok, it’s ok, let it all out" and I was thinking how long should I cry for it to be ok for me to stop? In the funeral my father told me that David, just before dying had said, "I finally can see this boy becoming something.”
My father said that to make me feel good, not knowing that it would be like an arrow in the heart. How could my beloved grandfather have thought of me as a loser? Was I a disappointment to him? I was angry with him, and for the longest time, I was upset not knowing the answer for “Eight multiplied by eight” is sixty-four. You hear, David, I know it’s sixty-four! Damn sixty-four! Since that day I have wanted my father’s watch, and set my mind to ask for it. I am not so sure why I wanted it, if it was because I wanted to be prepared for the next time somebody would ask me a multiplication question or because it was my last connection to my memory of grandpa.
A year after I had my visit in Israel, where I had the conversation about the will with my father, he came here to New York, the center of the new world, to see how I was living. I was so afraid to see him again. I had grown so far apart from my family and had no clue to what would happen, and what might be if I failed the “test” again. The day he came I saw a different man standing in front of me; his love handles seemed to take control of his body, and his beard declared his old age with white snow color. A sadness set over me, but under his old appearance I saw what I remembered so vividly as my father, his eyes; eyes as blue as you can find deep in frozen ice, clean and clear and full with naivety as a child just born. I learned to see my father as a man, and not only as a father, and I learned he has, like me, his doubts, dreams, and faults.
One day while we were sight seeing, my father sat me down for a coffee. It was in the World Trade Center. While looking into my eyes to see if he could recognize one reaction or another, he said he had some news about the watch. First he said that since my brother and sister did not show interest in the watch, I was the one getting it. “It’s written in the will.” He said that he found that the watch was actually pretty rare and was from after the turn of the century. It is a Breitling watch, which was used by the first army pilots of those days. It seems it was tradition to give a watch upon graduation. My father also added that it is now a collector’s item, and that his insurance agent estimated its worth up to $15,000. But that was not the reason he needed to sit me down for coffee. For my father, coffee means serious talk. I guess he got that from when he was a kid in Belgium. Before I could set my mind to hear the tale, my heart was rushing blood to my brain, trying to analyze the results of the “test”; did I pass it this time?
Here is the story my father asked me to keep as a secret back then. The dark side of the watch... it seems that my father’s watch is actually my grandfather’s watch. In World War II, the Nazis separated my family. My father was hiding with one family, while my grandmother was in Auschwitz, a concentration camp, and my grandfather, David, was moving from one place to the other, looking for places to hide. He used to smuggle watches over the border for the mafia, and it seems there was decent money to be made. It helped keep my family alive. The woman who hid my grandfather saw that business was good, and asked to join my grandfather in his line of work. Any pleading from my grandfather as to the danger and his efforts of trying to keep her out ended up in a fight. My grandfather eventually agreed to take her with him, and for some time trained her for his next mission, letting her in on all the small details, which needed to be known.
At their first joined smuggling mission, the woman got cold feet at the border, and was caught by the guard who felt her tension. My grandfather, being the gentleman he was, gave himself up telling the guard that it was his fault and that the woman knew nothing of the watches. My father said that my grandfather went to jail for that, for about six months. I called my grandma to confirm the story, and she said that he was in custody just for a week. She said, "It was a time of war, no body had time for a small smuggler.” Well, I don’t believe her, well I do, but I prefer my father’s story. So, it’s six months.
You see, I am writing this story after the bombing of the World Trade Center. It seems that event left a big hole in my reality, a hole that my emotions have hard time to fill. So I sat down to think of all the times that I have been in the World Trade Center, and I remembered the time I had coffee with my father and the conversation regarding the watch. Now, more then ever, I felt the need for my family. The idea that even the World Trade Center won’t be there forever, made me realize that almost nothing is forever and neither is my family.
My father went on a long and arduous mission to fix the watch. It took almost two years and two trips to Switzerland, not to mentioning the high cost of the repair to fix it. My father might never admit to that, but I know he did that to show how much he loves me and cares for my need. I started to understand how much family is important to my father, and how much it is important to me, and how by using the watch my father finally ties me to the past, my present and my future.
I treasure the watch, for it is my connection to the World Trade Center, my grandfather, my father… my life.