The watchmaker secretly set her watch five minutes fast

Old Cen is a watchmaker. His wife, Xiuqin, had one habit she never broke: she was late.

When she was young she danced in a performing arts troupe. Late to rehearsal, late to performances, and late to their dates as a matter of course. Old Cen — young Cen then — waited with his stomach in knots and never quite dared to complain.

Then one day she brought her watch in for servicing, and he did the one thing only a watchmaker could do. He set it five minutes fast, and said nothing.

She was never late again. She assumed her watch simply kept good time.

The secret lived inside a watch for forty years. Three watches came and went in that time, and every one of them, when it came in for servicing, got the same treatment. Their daughter caught him at it once. "Dad, is that really necessary?"

He didn't look up from the movement. "Your mother is a stage person. Onstage she can't wait, so offstage somebody has to give way. I fix watches. I know better than anyone how to give way. Five minutes doesn't hurt the watch, and it doesn't hurt her."

Did she really not know? Forty years with a watch that ran five minutes ahead of everyone else's. She had compared times with friends. Perhaps she knew. Perhaps she chose not to.

Last year she stopped wearing a watch altogether. She was in the hospital, and the diagnosis was getting clearer by the day. He put her oldest watch — the first one, mechanical, the one she refused to throw out — on her pillow and wound it for her every morning.

On her last afternoon she was lucid. She held his hand and said a few things. One of them was: "I always knew the watch was fast. Every time I looked at it, I felt it was chasing me, and I'd keep going, and then I'd be home. And you'd be there."

She paused, and then she said, "Old Cen, thank you for keeping my time accurate my whole life."

He held her hand and could not get a single word out. After the funeral, the first thing he did was set his own watch five minutes fast.

His daughter asked him why. He said, "From now on, when I look at my watch I'll feel that she's waiting up ahead. Five minutes fast means I arrive five minutes early. I'm not going to keep her waiting."

At its deepest, love stops being "what I did for you" and becomes "what I changed for you." Five minutes, changed for a lifetime, and it never once felt like a loss.

His stall is still there. A young customer brought in a pair of matching watches and asked him what he thought love was. He raised his wrist. "See this? My wife's watch and mine both run five minutes fast. People ask why. I tell them we live ahead of each other. She waited forty years for me. Now I wait for her. Waiting is part of love too."

The oldest mechanical watch sits in the glass case now, stopped at twenty past five on some afternoon. The card in front of it reads: This watch runs five minutes fast. Its owner was never late.

He has added a service to the stall. Young couples bring their matching watches in to be synchronized, and he always asks one extra question: which of you is the one who's late? The late one's watch gets quietly set five minutes ahead. No explanation. No charge. He says it is a rule handed down from his own master: a watchmaker has an obligation to make two watches catch up with each other. Most of the young couples walk off puzzled. One day they will understand, and they will come back and say thank you. That, he says, is what he is waiting for.