Before They Walked

On building something for two people who didn’t know you were building it.

I carried a secret for months.

Two watches. Same model. Different colorways. Bought deliberately, held quietly, waiting for the right moment. Jansen and Vaughan, my twin sons, eighteen years old, walked past me a hundred times since I ordered them. They had conversations with me at the kitchen table, in the car, in all the ordinary spaces of a life we share. They had no idea.

Friday evening at Clearwater Sound, before they walked across a stage and received their diplomas, I handed each of them a watch. Not a card. Not a handshake. A watch rated to 1,250 meters, built to last a lifetime, built for the deep end, built for wherever they were going next.

They didn’t know what they were heading into yet. I’m not sure I did either, at eighteen. But they had something on their wrists that was chosen before they had a plan.

The watches are Oceaneva GMT Deep Marine Explorer 1250M Pro Divers. Yellow and black for Vaughan. Red and black for Jansen.

I want to be honest about how that decision was made: I looked at both watches and went with what felt right. The same instinct that has driven most of the decisions worth anything in this collection. Vaughan is heading toward computer hardware, circuit boards, the internal logic of things, there’s something in yellow and black that fits that energy, a certain boldness, a willingness to be seen. Jansen, it turns out, is heading somewhere that requires a different kind of readiness entirely. EMT school first, then a few years of work, then Fire College. A man who intends to run toward what everyone else is running from. The red and black suits him just fine.

Two watches. One choice each. No crossover, ever. That last part matters more than it might seem.

I’ve been building watch collections for Jansen and Vaughan separately, in parallel, for a while now. The rule is simple and absolute: no piece in Jansen’s collection can appear in Vaughan’s, and nothing in either of theirs can appear in mine. When the collections eventually transfer, and they will, that’s always been the point, every single piece will be genuinely new to them. Nothing repeated. Nothing borrowed from somewhere else.

I built that structure for them before I told them it existed. That’s the part I want them to understand. Not that I gave them watches. That I thought about them specifically, as individuals, as two different people with two different futures, and built something that reflected that distinction. The no-crossover rule isn’t about the watches. It’s about saying: I see you as separate. I always have.

I gave them the watches before the ceremony, before the crowd, before the pageantry, before any of it became official. Just the three of us. They suspected nothing.

They both thought the watches were very nice. Expensive, even. They were right on both counts, though the real cost wasn’t the price, it was the months of quiet intention that preceded the handoff. They put them on. They wore them to lunch with their mother, then onto the stage at Clearwater Sound, then into the evening that followed.

After the ceremony, the whole family gathered, Chrissy, my parents, all of us, and we took the night to Bascom’s Chop House. Jansen and Vaughan wore their graduation robes to the table. More than a few strangers stopped over the course of the meal to congratulate them. The robes have a way of making an occasion legible to a room. At some point during the evening, the waiter noticed the watches and complimented them. Two eighteen-year-olds in maroon and gold, diplomas in hand, Oceanevas on their wrists, in a room full of people who recognized the moment for what it was.

In the photo after the ceremony, the three of us standing outside in the Florida evening light, Jansen already has the watch on his wrist. You can see it if you know to look. He didn’t take it off. Neither did Vaughan.

That’s the whole story, right there.

I didn’t have this. That’s worth saying plainly, not to generate sympathy, but because it’s true. What I’m building for Jansen and Vaughan is something I’m constructing forward, not passing back. A collection they didn’t know they had. A rule designed to protect them from ever receiving something secondhand. A first watch chosen with more thought than most people put into the last one they’ll ever buy.

I don’t know if they fully appreciated watches before Friday. Probably not the way I do. But I’d imagine one day they will. At some point in a life, everyone needs a good watch. And when that moment fully arrives for them, when they finally understand what they’re holding, they’ll already be holding something worthy of it.

The Norwegian Prima departs June 21st. Eight days. Caribbean ports. And somewhere on that ship, three Oceanevas on three wrists.

The Pro Divers were built for 1,250 meters of depth. We are not going to 1,250 meters. We’re going to Dunn’s River Falls in Ocho Rios, where the climb is wet and the water comes at you from above and you go up hand-in-hand with people you love and the whole thing is slightly ridiculous and completely right. The watches are rated for the deep end. What they’re actually getting is a Tuesday in Jamaica when everything is exactly as it should be.

That feels like a reasonable beginning.

This publication is a memoir told through objects. The objects are the door, not the subject. What I’ve been doing with this collection, the roadmap, the rules, the incremental decisions made one careful step at a time, isn’t really about watches. It’s about paying attention to the things that matter and not settling for less than they deserve. It’s about building with intention toward something you can’t fully see yet. It’s about resisting the disposable version of everything in favor of the thing built to last.

I want them to know that. Not from a speech, I kept it short before the ceremony, because the watches said most of it, but eventually, when they read this. That their father was paying attention. That the parallel collections exist. That the no-crossover rule was designed specifically so that when the time comes, everything in their hands is genuinely, completely theirs.

They walked across a stage Friday evening and started the rest of their lives.

They did it wearing something that was chosen for them before they had any idea what they were walking toward.

That was always the point.

— Jaime

Jaime is a affiliate with Oceaneva Watches. Oceaneva.com/Bezels use code Bezels for an addition 10% off.