Momma Said There'd Be Days Like This

Coming up in November of 2012, my mother will have been gone for 14 years. I miss her most every day but today was especially hard.  We all have traditions around the holidays and our family was no different. We used to open presents on Christmas Eve and have oysters and lobster for dinner.  It was never Christmas in our house unless you got a new book, and usually you got a calendar as well.  I used to get horse calendars a lot because they were my favorite animal.  (I always wondered why the picture of the horse for May was always a white/gray one...but maybe that's for another post).  I got Cow calendars after I moved to Wisconsin and decorated my kitchen with any sort of bovine item I could find.  My mother got Kleiban Cat calendars or calendars with pictures of food or flowers.

On January 1, or the 2nd as today is...my mom and I used to sit at the dining room table armed with a bunch of new colored pens or pencils, our new calendars and our calendars from the year just passed.  We would slowly go through month by month and put in birthdays, anniversaries, holidays and any appointments we knew we might have coming up.  It was a way to reflect on the year gone by and a way to look forward to the upcoming year as well. The Rose Parade was usually on in the background and we would watch the beautiful floats as we created beautiful little pictures in the small squares of our calendars. We drew hearts on the square for February 14th, a shamrock for March 17th, an egg or a bunny or a basket for whenever Easter was.  Relatives birthday's used to be marked in the same color and the birthday it was would be proudly displayed...My mom's birthday was January 7th so that was always the first entry."Bapa is 73!" for my grandfather, or "My 22nd" on May 5th for my day.  Friends would get their birthday's listed as well, usually in a different color than our relatives, but distinctive enough so we knew who was celebrating when.  It usually took us an hour or so and we'd talk and laugh and remember as we did this.

But times and traditions change. I don't have a wall calendar this year. Yesterday, I put birthdays, anniversaries and appointments into the calendar on my iPhone.  Today, I watched the Rose parade alone.