An empty-nester finds little need for huge squares and pockets on her new calendar

“No, no, nope…this is it?”

I was at an office supply store looking for a kitchen wall calendar for 2024 and was far from pleased with the selection. Too big, too bland, too many animals, too crude, too many memes: Nothing made me think, “Into my hands, into our home.”

Do you know that six-word story that is misattributed to Ernest Hemingway? “For sale. Baby shoes, never worn.” While the website Quote Investigator breaks down the actual source, Six-word Memoirs is a website and series of books that encapsulate lived experiences into just six words. Mine could be, “Family life portal: kitchen wall calendar.”

The wall calendar origins date back to an American printer in 1876, nearly 150 years ago, and they soon found a place in most every home. Where I grew up, it was next to the rotary wall phone in our kitchen. When I was a kid, my dad worked for the Traveler’s Insurance Company and every year, employees received a wall calendar of Currier & Ives prints. Just the thought brings me back to that kitchen with the goldenrod cabinets, metal trimmed countertops, and a tile-pattern linoleum floor that was perfect for the life-skills game, Don’t Step in the Lava.

My grown-up kitchen, with a boring wood floor, has always had a whimsical monthly wall calendar. It had to have big squares for each day and a pocket for all the paper that comes with three kids: sports, birthday parties, classroom activities, permission slips, cards for doctor and dental visits, so many flyers for all kinds of activities. With children come reams of paper.

When our first child entered school and the papers started rolling in, I remember being overwhelmed by a feeling of sadness and a loss of freedom when I realized that the pattern of our days and years — from when we woke up to when we traveled — wouldn’t be chosen by me. Dictator of our life? School schedule.

For the nearly three decades since, school has been the organizing point of our lives and our whimsical kitchen calendars, with a pocket on each page, served my family well. Other dates were tucked into our brains to be noted on future calendars: 2015 when our first graduated high school, 2017 when the middle child did, and 2023 when the last kid got his diploma. College and grad school graduations are important, too, but when they move onto campus, they become the masters of their own calendars.

For years the 2023 milestone date waved in my head like a victory flag as our family navigated life by the school schedule. Never, not once, did I give thought to the compass rose of 2024 and beyond.

Last week, by rote, I went to the office supply store and grabbed the whimsical wall calendar with big squares and pocket on each page … and froze. My husband and I are the only ones at home. Does this empty nest require one this large? Do we even need one now?

The latter is a question for 2025, I’m not ready to give up the family calendar even if the family members have their own kitchens. But I allowed myself to rethink what would work for the two of us, while also covering all the tack marks decades of wall calendars have made.

But none of the calendars in that store spoke and said, “Take me to your kitchen.” It took three stores before I found one that is reminiscent of the calendars that have hung in that spot for years, but different enough to work with the schedules of us newbie empty-nesters.

As I was processing my surprise feelings of sadness over what has gone and hope for what’s to come, I remembered that six-word memoir and one came to mind:

With family, calendar grows … then shrinks.

Susan is a Kansas City based writer and podcaster. She co-hosts the long-running and award-winning women’s history podcast, The History Chicks. She wishes you and yours a very happy new year.