On the left is the watch that started it all for me: my father's two-tone Omega Constellation day-date. On the right is a steel version I bought about ten years ago.
My dad bought his watch in 1975, shortly before he married my stepmother. (He got her a matching ladies' model as a wedding present.) He wore it a lot - it was his go-anywhere, do-anything watch for many years. A few years after his early retirement in the early '90s I noticed he was wearing something else on his wrist - I think his Omega probably needed a service, and instead of sending it out, he bought something less expensive, and the Constellation ended up in a drawer. It was a shame - as you can see, he had his initials embossed in the clasp.
Over the years, he wore a succession of inexpensive watches, ending up with an oversized quartz Seiko (he was a physically large man, and when his eyesight got poor, he needed something really easy to read). After I bought my first modern Omega, a Seamaster Diver, he asked about it when he saw it on my wrist. When I told him it was an Omega, he smiled and said, "Well done. They're the very best."
I asked him where his Constellation was - I offered to pay for a service and restoration - but he demurred. After he passed away in May of 2023, I found his watch right where I guessed it might be: in the back of a drawer in his dresser. It went to Switzerland for a full restoration, returning after about nine months. Oddly enough, I still can't wear it - they couldn't remove enough links from the bracelet to make it fit (as I said, Dad was a big guy). I looked up to him, figuratively and literally, until the day he died. His watch lives now in my watch box. Every time I see it - right next to its close cousin - I think of him.
