Last week, as I do every year, I bought two wall calendars: an artsy, colorful one for my office, and a cute Peanuts one for our kitchen. My search bypassed dozens of chic, expensively letterpressed calendars, whose designs shunted the number grid to the side, or relegated it to a single line of numerals. Charming, perhaps, but only half-functional. I need a calendar I can write on.
For most of my childhood, my mom bought a wall calendar each year, often waiting until after Christmas when the calendars went on sale. She hung it on the inside of the pantry door, marking birthdays, appointments, school events, upcoming trips in her neat cursive. Anyone needing to know what day it was, or what was coming up, could open the door and see it: the hidden, but vital, nucleus of the way our family kept time.
When my sister and I were old enough, we got to pick out our own calendars every year. I remember sitting at the kitchen table, non-smudgy ballpoint pen in hand, flipping through the year and writing down birthdays. Mom first, in the last week of January. My sister, ten days after Mom. A grandmother, an aunt, a cousin or two. Dad’s birthday in August, and mine in the middle of September, followed by my grandfather, nine days later.
Imitating Mom, we thumbtacked our calendars to the inside of our closet doors, scribbling down our own reminders. As the years went on, I added the birthdays of my best friends: Jon, Adam, Mike, Shannon. Brittany, Lina, Stephen, Kate. I still remember all their birthdays.
I’m not much good at keeping up a planner, though every few months I try again in a burst of organizational intention. And I know life isn’t a calendar, as Jenna recently remarked. Some progress is measured in cycles, some in fits and starts, some in steps like a dance, which don’t “take” you anywhere but which mark time nevertheless. I usually choose a word for the year and I often make some resolutions, but it doesn’t mean the days are entirely linear, nor would I want them to be.
But I do rely on my two wall calendars. They hang quietly above my desk and above my kitchen counter, twin steady heartbeats, marking the progression of days and weeks and months, which somehow add up to years much faster than they used to. They give me a visual glance at the whole month, glimpses of what’s behind, what is here now, what’s ahead.
I mark time with my wristwatch, the clock on my computer, the progress of the sun in the sliver of sky outside my office window. My church observes seasons with still-new names: Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Pentecost. My senses take in the progress of sunshine and dusk, fallen leaves and snow crunching underfoot, tender new grass and full-blown summer flowers. I mark time with my closet, my meals, in the pages of my journal.
These stacks of paper, printed with numbers, are only one way of keeping time. And yet the old ritual anchors me, turning over a new page each month. A grid of fresh white space, vibrating with possibilities, sprinkled with a few reminders or events to look forward to. I don’t try to write everything down; I know I can’t. Most of what happens will fill itself in.
Do you keep a calendar or a planner? How do you mark time?
cakes, tea and dreams 
I used to keep a calender for undergrad where I mark the important deadliens (which were pretty much most of the days of the semester), but I stopped after that since I put reminders on my iphone. But if I would go back to the habit, I’d pick the calenders with huge boxes (the ones that you flip one month at a time, and have enough space for everything I want to write on). Great post.
I made family calendars as Christmas gifts this year, with tons of pics of Eleanor, my niece, nephew, and cousins. It’s hanging in the kitchen, so I can scribble reminders on it, and it makes me smile to look at the pictures and think that my siblings and aunts and grandparents and parents are looking at the same ones too!
Lovely post. You just reminded me, too. I’m out of printer ink, so I need my husband to print off a calendar for me at his work. ha!
I’ve always loved calendars, and used to give them as gifts quite often. I carry a pocket calendar/day planner in my purse – I’ve never gotten into the electronic calendar thing – and use a wall calendar for family activities (which I keep tacked inside the pantry door 🙂 I have a Filofax planner too, and I’ve gotten better about using it for lists and notes.
I keep my purse day/planners from year to year, and it’s interesting to go back and look at them with their scribbled notes and coffee stains. I think calendars give us a sense of having some control over time. It’s just an illusion though, isn’t it?
My days have gotten so busy that I’d be lost without my calendar. I have one that is spiral bound with lots of writing space for each day. Everything is on there. Appts, deadlines, things to do…for garden, house, family. Plans. I found that I was missing things when I used multiple calendars. So, one calendar with large writing spaces works great.
I have a Moleskine daily planner and I consider it an extension of my brain. I carry it everywhere with me. I’m a journalist on a daily newspaper, so my days are chock-full of appointments. I also scribble in birthdays, bill payments, pay days, moon phases, phone numbers etc etc, as well any other important information I need. I shudder to think how disorganised my life would be without it!
I tried to use an electronic calendar once but all that did was teach me that I’m definitely a paper girl.
This is a lovely essay, Katie. The last two paragraphs are especially poignant. And your calendars remind me that I haven’t bought a calendar in some years, even though I used to get a new one each December. My brother and I used to get one for Christmas each year, to hang in our rooms, mimicking our mother’s that hung on the wall next to the fridge in the kitchen. As I mark time electronically so much now — on my computer and phone — I’ve stopped buying wall calendars. But each year around this time I feel slightly nostalgic for them. I have a space on my kitchen wall that needs some color. Maybe it’s time to check out the New Year sales on tidy, numbered squares….
We also had a calendar, on our refrigerator door (actually, on the freezer door, because that one was opened less often). It contained and corralled every event in our family. In addition to appointments and birthdays, my mother wrote down the first snow, or a bloody nose. As a single adult, I eschewed the wall calendar, but the moment Kristina was born, I put up my own wall calendar,and have chosen one with care every year. I have them all in my office closet – 20 of them now – and whenever someone questions when something happened, we have that resource to go to. Now it is a treasure, and I’m so glad I’ve kept them. I use the calendars on my computer and online and on my phone all the time – and I faithfully duplicate what’s there to the wall calendar. It’s a treasure. And I dearly enjoy the search each year for the collection of artwork or photos that I hope will infuse the year with something beautiful as I turn the pages up.
[…] Marking time (katieleigh.wordpress.com) […]