The Calendar

I just set up my calendar for 2013.

It's nothing glamorous.  It's the cheapest desk calendar that I could find at the office supply store.

Every year I start with a brand new crisp paper calendar with a cardboard back and plastic corners to keep the pages from going awry.

I take all twelve months and I plan them accordingly.  I write down all events that I know of at the beginning of the year.  I schedule all of my time with my child and all of my work holidays.  I schedule all school holidays and I write down all of the birthdays for family and those special to me.

Yes, I also have all of this down on the calendars on my smart phone and it's comparable tablet but I want this laid out before me where I can see it all at once.  Yes, I can wait for social networking to tell me who I am supposed to remember on any specific day, but again, I want it in writing.

It's the beginning of the year, I want to know what to expect for the next 12 months.

The pages are all so white clean and crisp.  The corners are all so straight.  The plastic seems to do it's job so well.

The calendar is complete. 
I have it all scheduled out before me. 
I know what to expect. 

LET THE NEW YEAR BEGIN!!!

And so it does.

But very little tends to go as planned.

I find myself writing more onto my calendar in the first week alone, appointments, new birthdays, re-scheduled events, adjustments to my child's schedule....

As I flip through the months back and forth, I notice that January is no longer crisp.  It had been pushed out of the way so many times that it is haggard and worn.  I have scribbled so many "adjustments" on the page that it is more like an abused scratch pad than a crisp page of structure and organization.  By the 31st, the page is ready to be torn away and recycled.  As an entity, it wants this. 

But it is no entity.  It is merely one page of my life.

The cycle begins for February... and when I have reached the 28th, it can take no more.  It must go.

Another page has turned, been ripped out and is gone.

By March I am adding vacations for me and for my child with and without me.  It's the time without her that I do not wish to remember.  Easter has passed and now MARCH MUST GO!

I try to remember very little of the nuisances I have scheduled on my calendars.  And so there is a cleansing with the dismissal of each and every page. 

I remember March of last year a co-worker gave me a slice of pizza and it dripped some grease onto March.  The drip soaked through the pages and finally faded leaving it's final mark on September 16th.  This was not an eventful day as I recall, but I did make a note of it on that March day so that on September 16th I'd know what I was looking at on my white crisp page.

As the months pass, each and every month I reach tends to start out less crisp than the last month.  It is as though everything I schedule on the page for the month before is bearing down and pressuring the months to come. 

As I flip pages in and out to see what is to come, the corners of each page become more and more curled and the plastic corners are no longer up for the task for which they were designed.  They are mere decorations by the time I reach December.

As I tear away November, having delved once again into the "Holidays," my calendar looks worn down.  It is beaten.  It has been well used and has very little left to offer.  On December 1st, the page looks as defeated as January did on the 31st all those pages ago.

I must work through this tired page and muster on.  The page is cold and aged.  It has scars on it from scribbles that were made on other pages when they were in their crispy prime.  December is a page that was crisp and new on January 1st but is an old man by December 1st. 

It had no prime.

As I scratch off the passing days through December, I can see the marks made in time, scribbles of some important meeting or a birthday of someone dear to me or an event that I did not wish to forget which I have evidently forgotten.

December bears the burden held by all of the pages throughout the year.  It is the only page to see how the year was expected to go, what was changed and how it actually turned out.  December is the one page that had the most time to age.

December is a tired old man welcoming the clean crisp youth of January.  It is the only page to see the new calendar come to replace it.  And so it rests before me as I fill out my next calendar. 

The twelve pages are very real, but are certainly a metaphor for me for each and every year.

Perhaps it is more than a calendar for you?

Happy New Years everybody!  May your pages stay crisp, clean and neat!