From Time to Time

The Sunday Scribblings prompt is Tradition

My 2009 calendars collated but not yet bound

The tradition was started in the early 90s by my son Otto when his children were still small. He designed a calendar to share, originally, with his parents and siblings and those of his wife, Kristin. Each month of the year was represented by a large photo - most often of his son or daughter and their activities- from which would hang, by spiral binder, a calendar marked with the dates of family birthdays, anniversaries and any other dates that Otto felt worthy of inclusion - such as (I am just looking casually at a few of them in his 1995 calendar) - "Susan B. Anthony fined for voting, 1873" -"Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1756" - "Composting Toilet Day".

Here is a photo of Johnny from the 1995 calendar

The covers on these early calendars had simple construction paper covers designed with the help of his children.

Sample of early calendar cover.
Julian was their dog. Pippi was their cat.

Sometime in the late 90s son Otto announced that he would not be producing a calendar that year, and I said, "I'll do it!" And I have been doing it ever since.

And I have made it more and more difficult for myself by adding carefully computer-designed covers with computer printing of date (year) and greetings, by not having simple photos for the upper portion frequently using collages to work in everything I want to say about the year in 12 pages (13 if you count the cover). I try to represent the families of my children fairly, and, since I now have six grandchildren plus the generations between them and us, I spend a lot of time worrying. (I do that whether or not I am designing a calendar).

Cover for my 2009 calendar.

Then, of course, there is the task of constructing the calendar itself (two times since I started doing the calendar I have had the dates on one month displaced, thus disorienting the recipients and embarrassing me!) Then I must transfer the personal dates to their proper compartments. and add my own choice of extra dates. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart still has his birthday marked. I have added quite a few - Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers - Hiroshima Day - nothing as funny as son Otto's April first entries ("Turn quick, there's an elephant behind you", "Don't forget!! Tax returns now due March 15").

Here is a sample month from my 2009 calendar.

The number of recipients this year is 32. I have spent many hours of last two months working on the calendars, and I haven't had time to add comments to all the sunday scribblings and other blogs that that I read with such interest.

Our Canon printer is much faster than our old HP, making the printing less time-consuming -Thank Goodness! Husband Otto did the collating (see top photo) and is responsible for the binding and the punching of the hanging hole, which he is taking care of right now. Next comes envelope stuffing and addressing to addresses that I HOPE have not changed since last year.

And why do I think all this work is a tradition? Because of the feedback is that everyone enjoys the calendar that is current and is counting on next year's also. I suspect that the family calendar is a tradition that that will continue until I can no longer totter to the computer. And by then I hope that someone else will take responsibility for the tradition.