Life or Something Like It: Calendar daze

My husband says he minds the clock while I maintain the calendar.

True enough. I have trouble getting where I’m going on time. I’m the one who slips in a few minutes late to meetings, classes and even sometimes church services. He’s patiently tried to fix this flaw, suggesting helpfully I might want to add 30 minutes to the time I think I’ll be finished with a task so as to have enough time to get to the next. It might make sense in his mind, but not mine. If I know I have 30 minutes …

Ah, but the calendar. That’s my arena. Row upon row of black-lined squares where you write plans for the month. A longer view than one that relies on minutes and hours.

When the boys were young, we kept a poster board-sized calendar on the side of the refrigerator with soccer, academic team, band, softball and basketball practice schedules. Our sons pasted smiley-faced stickers for each day they practiced their violin or did their chores, depending on the area that particular son was having difficulty with. Enough stickers meant a reward at the end of the month.

We depended on each month’s calendar page, counting on it to get us to practices and dentist appointments on the right days.

With the boys grown, we no longer use the fridge calendar. Now I carry an 8-by-10-inch one around to note doctor’s appointments and birthdays. My mom likes her 3-by-6-inch one she can carry in her purse. But I like the larger spread.

Not that I don’t have an electronic calendar on my computer at the college where I and others can make appointments for me and block off chunks of time. And I probably could figure out how to use the calendar in my phone to note important dates and add a pleasant tone to remind me when it’s time for a meeting.

But I still like to look at those neat squares dividing up a month at a time and see when its holidays are, when I have a haircut scheduled, what plans we have for the weekends.

When each new year comes, I spend an hour or so transferring birthdays and bill payment days to my new calendar, so full of possibilities with its blank squares. And then when the year is over, I file away that year’s calendar, a little battered for being carried around all year, but a record of what we did, where we went.

Chuck’s grandmother in Florida used to keep the giveaway calendars from the pharmacy, each day carefully recording the high and low temperatures and whether it rained and any special note for the day. He found a stack of them when the family cleaned out her little house after she died, marveling at her meticulous recordkeeping.

Last week our church missions team met, and part of our agenda was to map missions events for the next few months. There’s a monthly visit to the Glen Dale campus of Sunrise Children’s Services, moved from Glendale to near our church. And regular trips to a nursing home and a homeless shelter in Louisville.

Next month is Easter, so we noted Easter egg hunts at the church and a nearby apartment complex. And spring break, where our college-aged kids will do some local mission work.

And April should be time for a block party, where we invite the church’s neighbors to a spring picnic with live music and children’s activities. And youth Spring Break missions activities.

We dutifully noted when aVacation Bible School, a teen summer missions trip, children’s camp, teen camp and a missions trip to Malaysia all would be scheduled this summer. Then there’s a back-to-school cookout and school supply giveaway at the apartment complex.

We couldn’t think about going back to school. Where had the summer gone? We had to stop looking ahead like this. Fall Festival would be here before we knew it. And spring hasn’t even sprung.

We closed the calendars and looked at each other, wide-eyed. One day at a time.

Or month at a time. Got some boys sleeping in our basement the last weekend of February for a retreat. Need to get it painted by then.

Suzanne Darland teaches journalism classes and is director of the faculty advising center at Elizabethtown Community and Technical College.