The Repair Shop on Bedford Avenue

My grandmother's watch stopped working this year, a small gold watch my grandfather gave her for their tenth anniversary in 1962. Every jeweler I took it to told me it wasn't worth repairing.

Then my coworker mentioned a tiny watch repair shop on Bedford Avenue run by a Ukrainian man in his eighties named Mykola, so I went. He opened the back with a tool smaller than a toothpick, looked at it through a little lens and smiled. "This is a very good watch," he said. "They made them to last forever."

It took him three weeks. When I picked it up, it was ticking. He'd polished it and replaced the strap with soft brown leather. He charged me forty dollars.

I gave it back to my grandmother at Sunday dinner. She put it on her wrist, held it to her ear and listened for a long time. Then she said, "It sounds just like it did when he gave it to me."