old calendar

My notations on the handmade calendar are 22 years-old. I can not remember the significance of “Bible Institute,” a Saturday shopping trip with my husband or a terse “relaxed. No rush to swimming” in June. I was read to trash the ragged, old thing when I came across it again recently.
My hand drawn calendar was obviously a New Year’s resolution. Every day in January is filled with extensive notes on visiting friends, the cost of kids’ boots and after Christmas purchases. As the year wore out so did my enthusiasm for recording family activities. By December half the days are empty. I only noted appointments and weekly activities: “Cub Scouts, caroling, company dinner.”
Then April 4 caught my eye, “Grandma Waight’s funeral.” I turned back a page to March 29: “Grandma Waight in a coma” followed by March 31 “Grandma Waight died.”
I knew that was the year she died, but I would have been hard pressed to give the dates. I had forgotten. The calendar had not.
After her funeral in New York, my Arizona sister and I stayed, with our babies, to visit Mom and help close up Grandma’s house. Wednesday evening our little sister came home from college on her first date with her future husband. On Friday my nephew went to the medical clinic to treat a cold. Early Saturday, he went to the hospital with pneumonia and fever induced convulsions where he recovered.
A coupe weeks after I got home, I stepped on a nail. I only mention it here because it resulted in the only house call we ever had: I fainted from the pain of the puncture wound and scared my husband. He called the doctor. After reassuring my husband the doctor stopped by our house on his way to the clinic to check on me.
In May, I wrote, “Car shopping. Chose one.” Such a small note for a car we ultimately drove 11 years and nearly 200,000 miles.
June was busy with Bible School, swimming, company, the annual Cub Scout Father and Son camp out and canning. June 28 I picked and canned 20 quarts of cherries for pies, made 4 quarts of jelly and 4 quarts of jam – and my 3 year-old cut his head while swimming.
Two weeks later I missed my little sister’s New York wedding – I was sitting in the pediatric intensive care unit waiting for that same 3 year-old to rouse out of a coma induced after an encounter with a moving car. The following days are filled with notes of his recovery and my mom’s arrival. She cleaned up after my sister’s wedding, packed her bags, took two weeks off from work and came to help with the other children while I went to the hospital every day.
In the fall my husband built an outbuilding: a kids’ fort over a tool shed.
By late fall my interest in maintaining a daily journal waned. Half the days are devoid of anything other than a date. Even though part of the year is missing, I’m keeping the tattered old calendar: It’s still very full of memories.