My middle son, David, fourteen at the time, shouted up the stairs to me the date of his next basketball practice. “Put it on the calendar!” I yelled down to him. As in THE calendar—the one that tells us where to go when. The big master calendar hanging by our kitchen phone is where we, ideally, are supposed to write down all sports practices and games, appointments, project due dates, and work schedules. If somebody doesn’t write an event on the calendar, then that’s too bad; we’ll miss it. It’s the little bit of organization that my house has, and I stick by it. Without it, our house of chaos would be even worse.
It has to hang by the phone because the idea here is that if my husband or one of the boys gets a phone call about a meeting or doctor appointment, then all they’ll have to do is turn and write it immediately on the calendar. Works in theory, but not in practice. One of the boys – I forget who – once left a phone message on a Band-Aid wrapper that happened to be lying on the counter. I happened to notice it when I was about to throw the wrapper in the trash.
At the suggestion of a friend, one time I even began coordinating the calendar by writing my sons’ appointments and activities in different colors: my oldest son Billy’s appointments in blue, David’s in red, and Jason’s in green. It took a little practice to get used to this method, but it definitely helped to remember things. However, eventually one of the colored markers would run out of ink or got misplaced, in which case, I’d grab another marker and write in the wrong color for that son, thus making a total mess of the calendar and defeating the whole purpose of the color coordination in the first place. All of my family members rely on that master calendar, and over the years it’s become MY job to keep in updated. Like I have nothing else to do.
Our calendar has also replaced my all-important ‘to do’ list; I just jot the information down on the calendar and take it one day at a time. I write down certain errands or household chores for a particular day so I can stay focused. Every time I do this, though, I’m reminded of an episode of a Bernstein Bear show in which the two little cubs and Papa Bear had to take over Mama Bear’s household duties for a week. As they would mark each chore off the list, they’d smile at each other like they’d really accomplished something. “They’re in for a rude awakening,” I thought to myself. I’d like to see the expressions on their faces when they realize that mothers never get to ‘mark off’ a chore because we have to do it all over again within 48 hours. Mama Bear would have to do all those chores again as soon as she came home. But at least poor ole Mama Bear was able to get away for a few days. That’s a tough thing for moms to do, and when we do manage it, we have to spend hours working on detailed lists and instructions to leave behind with our husbands.
Even though the calendar might tell us where and when to be somewhere, getting there on time is sometimes half the battle. If it’s a doctor or dentist appointment, we get there on time, but for other things, sometimes I feel we have a little more leeway. Yes, usually we are the ones sneaking into church during the first hymn or in the middle of a prayer, getting to a sports event after the kick-off or first pitch, or showing up a little late for family get-togethers. “We’re always running late,” my youngest son, Jason, said to me one day as we pulled up a birthday party ten minutes behind schedule.
