It was one of those days you will remember forever. One of those days you look to when you are feeling beaten. When the world is against you. When you feel like a pebble on an abandoned highway.  You dream about this day just to keep going, just to keep your mind from turning against you, and for Joey Cappilari this dream day was becoming a reality.
Joey stepped into the compact kitchen. It was a small apartment, and an unfittingly smaller kitchen. Joey walked past the counter towards the rolling hills of spaghetti tattered dinner plates and used cereal bowls.  He reached beyond the horizon of filth and near uselessness, and grabbed his wallet held prisoner behind filth’s gates. He twiddled his thumbs for a brief moment, approached his mother, and gave her a light kiss on the cheek as she sipped from her coffee mug. Joey headed for the door, paused, and then continued out.
He stepped into the wilderness dressed for the occasion. Clad in his Sunday best; a new navy blue suit with pinstripes covered his creaseless white collared shirt which supported a maroon neck tie. New brown shoes with a pointed toe finished the look. The outfit was his mother’s contribution to his future.
It was not long to his father’s house, who had promised he would remain close when he and Joey’s mother divorced 9 years ago, but he moved much closer than Joey would have preferred. In reality, Joey would have much rather moved with his father, and away too. He always fancied of the idea of moving to the endless beaches and opportunities of California. They could buy a shack just a quick walk from the beach, where they would house all their surf boards, and stay up all night listening to the waves crash into the sand. His father talked of it too, but only briefly and that was years ago.  But the courts ruled he was to remain with his mother, and his father promised he would stay near as to support him in Little League and check on his grades. To this day he has failed to grasp why some third party was given the ability to choose the rest of his life for him. He was nine years in body, but twenty in brain. “I want to reside with my father,” he told the gray judge. Yes, his father had struggled with stints of drug addiction, but never at home, never where Joey was present. He cared for Joey, he loved Joey, and he had true interest in taking Joey under his wing and escaping the horrors of the Bronx. His mother, on the other hand had always known the Bronx as home and had no desire to fix that.
Joey, turned the corner which held home to Mandy’s hotdog cart for so many years of his childhood. He remembered meeting his father here on Tuesdays, his father slipping Mandy a wad of one dollar bills and a hand full of coins, all he could scavenge from his ever so shallow pockets, in exchange for two of the most prestigious hotdogs he had ever set tooth in. The next day, he would be at this same corner, waiting for the school bus to take him to the only other place he had besides his father’s for sixteen hours.
When Joey arrived at Alfredo Cappilari’s building, he was thrilled to find no one else there. His father had waited for this day just as long as Joey to the point it frightened him that his father would attempt to pull an erratic stunt and have a surprise waiting. Joey Cappilari stepped in through the front door, placed his blazer on the coffee table residing in the front room, and called for his father.
“Just one second, I’m almost ready,” Alfredo answered from the back room. It was a small apartment, not much to be proud of but his father didn’t look at it that way. He viewed it as a trophy, and he treated it that way.
“I have something for you,” his father proclaimed with his hands behind his back.
Alfredo Cappilari reached his hands out, and gave to his son a silver watch. Joey had seen this particular watch once. It wasn’t the one his father wore to work at the hardware store, not the one he wore to wash dishes at Jo’s Burgers, and it wasn’t the one he wore to church after his rehab session each Sunday morning. This watch was different. This watch sat in a mahogany box with the words time is opportunity engraved on the side, near his bed. This watch had been his grandfather’s before he saved enough money on the small farm in the Italian countryside to buy a one way boat ticket to New York and a one bed room apartment. When his grandfather worked twelve-hour shifts at a retail store a half hour walk from the apartment and part time at a drive-in another fifteen minutes from there. He brought no one with him. Just a pocket of crumpled bills and this beloved watch. His only son would join him in later years after he had earned enough to buy a pass across the Atlantic, his wife would not live to see the opportunity. After grandfather had worked himself onto his deathbed, only a few short years after his wife had passed, he had managed enough to purchase a three bedroom apartment to leave to his son, along with his beloved watch. Alfredo Cappilari carried on his father’s work ethic, traveling across town to bus tables for the rich at brunch, then riding the subway half way back home to work a full shift at the same retail store his father had labored at. He nearly sold his father’s watch when he met Joey‘s mother, a stunning blonde with the eyes of an angel. He second guessed himself, remembering how much his father had meant to him and how much this watch meant to his father, and instead took up a third job in order to pay for a wedding. When Joey was born, the family journey had seemed to be complete. Hard times were soon to follow, but the watch stood through it all. Alfredo took the watch with him when he and his wife divorced, as reminder of why he was here, and where he wanted this watch to go. He strove to raise Joey to be better than he, the wear the silver metal watch with a single diamond with the honor and dignity of the grandfather. And with Joey leaving for the university today, Alfredo  hands over the mahogany case with the engrave words of encouragement with the hope that one day, his son will pass it on to his grandchild along with a greater opportunity than before.