View From ThE Apple House

I can’t remember exactly when I started doing it, but it became apparent to me I needed a calendar in order to survive the schedule of working full time and going to school. My Calendar is really a large desk blotter held on the side of my refrigerator with magnets in all four corners. Each page is serrated to tear off one month at a time. I keep the current month on top, with the upcoming month below it. I liked the desk style calendar because the spaces were larger than a regular calendar and I could write what I wanted to remember in them.

I keep all my Calendars, and sometimes I haul them out and wallow in nostalgia (or self-pity). It was more efficient than writing in a journal or diary. Some people keep baby books. I kept calendars.
As I got older, the Calendar became my lifeline to sanity, because it organized my thoughts – it helped me chart my course to get on track. The dates were circled, outlined, information written in black marker. My first college class after 10 years was written in pencil. I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to do it, but it was scheduled if I did. When I got a little older, I ignored my birthdays and the premature gray hair, and celebrated the birthdays of siblings and friends.

I eventually married, and of course, the day I married my husband was on the Calendar. The day that I met his two daughters was written in, circled in pink marker. The birth of our children was on the Calendar – although I had gotten anxious and written in the dates usually two weeks before anyone actually arrived. As I got bolder, I wrote in pen! So there were many cross outs and erasures a few years.

The birth of my last child and was written in letters that were big, thick and in black magic marker, surrounded by colored flowers and hearts, not to celebrate she was the last, but to announce her arrival. I hadn’t given birth to a girl of our own until then. I wasn’t going to miss that one! (As if I had a choice in the matter)

The Family Calendar (which it came to be known as) became the road map on the course of my family’s life, and I was the driver. With six children, it kept chaos to a minimum. Scheduling doctor appointments, noting celebrations, birthdays, tracking sick days became an exercise in diplomacy and managerial skill. You couldn’t do three things on the same day. It was the record book for chicken pox, immunization shots, allergy shots, (theirs, not mine) cholesterol pills, menstrual cycles, hot flashes (mine, not theirs).
It held the blocked off sections for vacations and holidays. We never really had the money to travel anywhere exotic or very far, but it was noted as Vacation Time so it was real. It was on the Calendar. (Nope, can’t do the laundry, I’m on vacation, check the Calendar.)

The Calendar kept track of paydays, mortgage due dates, golf dates, baseball games at the stadium. It also noted special days – an award, a letter to the editor printed in the paper, a song created, dinner with my husband. The worst argument we ever had. While time went by, the Calendar was the focal point for discussions and disagreements.

My children who were now teenagers but could not yet have access to the car, would make sure they jotted down where they needed to be – and where they could see I needed to be since I was the one that probably had to take them there. If it wasn’t on the Calendar, it wasn’t happening. I could tell who wrote what from the handwriting – no name was needed. It was sometimes used against me, their own mother! I had created calendar awareness. I had no defense for missing a game or a dance recital if it was on the Calendar. They all knew that anything I needed to do could be rescheduled. My stuff was always in pencil and they all knew better than to try to erase anything. But I always erased willingly, because I knew one day my name would be the only one on the Calendar I would have to keep track of.

As my family grew and expanded, calendar notations included grandchildren, nieces and nephews, at the same time becoming a monitor for avoiding neglect. Since all my relatives leave in different states, the Calendar is used to remember birthdays other than my immediate family’s. Even though I forget to send the cards, at least I remember it’s my Wisconsin sister’s birthday and I should plan to call her or better yet, e-mail her and remind my Florida sister, whose worse than me in remembering things, and who will tell my California sister. Then we call my Texas brother and laugh.
As we all got older, the notations would still be written, but there didn’t seem to be as many. It became a diary of events that were happening to everyone around me. Some things were important to note, but seemed monumental only to me. It listed the proms, graduations, the Christmas gatherings, the 4th of July parties. My son’s entrance into the Navy. The birth of my granddaughter. The death of my father-in-law. The day one of my children quit school. The day another got their GED. The day my best friend’s child was shot. Having them all listed in the same month gives you a perspective you might not have embraced had you not seen it on the refrigerator calendar. Its 30 years since I started this calendar thing, and now I am about to send my daughter off on her own. She’s the last, the baby of six brothers and sisters, all who have had their moments of importance before her, validated on the Calendar. They’ve all become attuned to checking the refrigerator, writing it all down on the Calendar. The date is there, August 23rd.

Its staring me in the face, but somehow I can’t seem to write in the space …”Mary goes to college”. Every time I try to jot this vital piece of information down, my head starts to pound, my stomach gets fluttery. My heart aches. Every now and then since we knew of her acceptance, I would glance at the space where I knew I had to jot down the date. August 23 had to be remembered since it was so important. But something always stopped me. It couldn’t be the empty nest syndrome, none of that nonsense for me, no way! I was ecstatic, my last kid was almost out of here and I was getting sick of this stupid Calendar! I was going to be free! I started to think of how foolish I must have seemed to them all – having to write everything on the Calendar for all to see. What was the big deal anyway?

What would life be like without the plans for the month? So what if I had a Calendar that had nothing on it? August 23 was coming fast, and I still hadn’t written anything in.

My husband, conditioned years ago to put it on the Calendar or it doesn’t count, was a little confused seeing this big gaping hole in the middle of the month. August 23 was so important and yet…nothing. Every now and then he would look at me and smile knowingly, an unspoken agreement between us. We both know she’s leaving, and we both know I can’t write it in there, to make it real, to schedule it. To make it permanent. To make it now. He knows. And so do we all.

The morning of August 23 came. We had overslept! Luckily we had packed the car the night before; all we had to do was collect ourselves. As we dashed out the door, I glanced at the refrigerator to check the Calendar as to what I was doing today – but I was just being foolish. Of course I knew what I was doing today. Returning from dropping her off, I was congratulating myself for having not fallen completely apart when saying goodbye. After all, she would be back. They all came back for visits, especially at Christmas – how many days was that from now anyway?
As I went over to the refrigerator to count, the reality of the empty space hit me. Because I realized at that moment there are some things that just don’t need to be written down. It doesn’t have to be in black magic marker. The letters don’t have to be big and loud. It’s there and you know it without having to write it on the calendar.

They say home is where the heart is. I say life is where your calendar hangs. Life is on the side of my Kenmore. I know that this was a monumental time in my life and so does my daughter. We’ll both remember 10 years from now that this was the weekend she went out on her own and became a person. No notation necessary. Well, maybe just in pencil.