The Funny, Quirky Stuff

On this day – it’s about the funny quirky stuff. If mom was still alive the stress would have started about a month ago – just before her birthday. The phone would ring and she would say “I can’t find my calendar. Your father and I have driven to the local bookstore but we can’t find it anywhere. The one place we checked that I thought would have it was already sold out.”

The calendar she was referring to was the Sierra Club Wilderness Calendar – because she loved the photography. It had to be the spiral bound one – so she could flip it over quickly if she needed to. AND – it had to be the one with the large boxes (for days) so that she had enough room to list all of the appointments that she and dad had. “Okay I’ll take care of it.” I’d tell her; and while still on the phone with her I’d grab my computer, go to amazon.com or Sierra Club (#sierraclub), search for the calendar, order and pay for it and make arrangements for her to have it in two days.

By this time she’d be talking about something else and when there was a break in the conversation, I’d tell her “okay it’s on the way”. “What’s on the way?” she’d ask. “Your calendar,” I’d tell her. “Susan Ann!” she’d say, I could never quite figure out if she was frustrated that I had arranged for it that fast or if she was happy that I had saved her some time trying to find it. What was important was that it was on the way. As the years went on, she would call and ask “can you order a calendar for me?” “Sure” I’d say and by the time we hung up from speaking with one another, she would know when the calendar would be coming. But she’d still double check – “it’s the spiral bound one right?” “Yes” I’d tell her.

The week that it arrived she’d spend her initial time looking at all of the photographs. When I was with her she told me what it was she liked about each one. The next week, she’d spend time putting in everyone’s birthday, making notes of appointments and (my favorite) adding her sketches of all of the holidays and birthdays.

Then in 2017 when we moved to RI from Florida, we packed the calendar but couldn’t find it once we arrived. This wasn’t good as I had finally (because I’m slow like this) realized that mom’s calendar and pencil was the exact equivalent of my MacBook pro. So I went to Amazon, looked up previous orders, changed the address to Rhode Island and (“bam!”) another one was on the way. By the time it arrived though, we had already (finally) found her old one so she had all of them (2 for 2018 and her 2017 one) next to her chair.

A few weeks ago when I was with my brother, I told him I had found her calendars about a month or so before visiting him. And because I’m neurotic like that – I took pictures of some of her sketches. And yes, I even thought of ordering a Sierra Club calendar (which would be totally nuts as everything even related to a calendar, appointment or important date is so streamlined on my MacBook (and color-coded and synced to my phone and watch) that this is a totally crazy idea. Right?

But it’s the memory of it and all of the conversations and very funny moments that went with it that make this a hard idea to let go of. Need a calendar? – You can get one here.