The Loveliness of a Man’s Things

A beautifully-dressed man will have just a few things. He’ll have a good watch. Maybe if he is like my husband, he’ll have two watches. One will be the gold watch that belonged to his grandfather who died fifty years ago. He must know the whereabouts of this watch at all times. The watch cannot ever be missing. Its value is in its lineage; the jeweler thinks it’s too old to repair. “Not worth it,” he says, blind to its meaning.

The other watch is new, elegant, gold and black; it peeks out from a French cuff just so slightly; the thick, tanned wrist of its owner showing off the watch’s new gleam. The watch is part of the man, not the other way around. Not every man can wear a watch so well.

A good wallet, glasses, a Zippo lighter, a wedding ring – those are a man’s lovely things, the things he keeps forever on a wooden tray on the top of his dresser along with cufflinks that belonged to his father-in-law and a tiny baseball bat tie clasp his wife had made for him. There are other things there on the dresser but not many of them.

The loveliness of a man’s things is in their small number, a few enduring things, not things that break or get lost or go out of fashion, things to which he is loyal, and things he considers to be very fine and all he needs.

A man’s things tell a story, and, if we are lucky, the story is a lovely one.

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A favorite of mine originally posted July 18, 2013.