My 2021 calendar is hanging from the closet door.

Every year I’ve lived in this house, I’ve gotten a cloth calendar, hung from a dowel. My mother’s mother always had a cloth calendar hanging in the farmhouse kitchen. As soon as the year was over, the calendar would be conscripted into use, usually to cover cinnamon rolls as they rose, to keep them moist until they were large enough to put into the oven.

Arriving at the farmhouse and seeing “1963” covering a pile of soon-to-be-baked sweet rolls was a wonderful sight and I will forever associate those cloth calendars with the anticipation of sweet things. I guess that’s why I have one now. It’s good to anticipate sweet things in the coming year.

My 2021 calendar is from Sweden. This means all the months are written in Swedish, surrounded by wildflowers identified in Swedish. My grandmother was a Swede, so I thought this was appropriate. But the real reason I ordered the calendar was that it was the only one I could find with legible dates.

Cloth calendars have apparently come into vogue and I had more choices than in past years, many in jazzy and colorful patterns. Unfortunately, the graphic designers responsible for these works of art did not seem to expect that a person might use the calendar for actual reference. I use the calendar to find the date -- an apparently antiquated idea.

All the calendars I found would require a strenuous search to locate the month of April amidst all the artwork and no easy way to tell how many weeks there were from April until a date in May. And so, while they were attractive, the calendars wouldn’t be very useful until they were used to cover sweet rolls.

But the Swedes have a reputation for being a practical bunch and this calendar looked more legible in Swedish than any I found in English, so I ordered it.

It wasn’t until it arrived that the problem became apparent.

Instead of seven columns for the seven days of the week, there were eight, with an additional column on the left for half the months and on the right for the rest. Someone finally explained that this column told me what week of the year it was. Saturday is in red, so it is possible to get one’s bearings -- but not without considerable effort.

But even before the calendar arrived, the year seemed filled with more uncertainty than any I can remember.

There is a careless confidence that comes with the making of plans. In the past, I have looked at my calendar on the wall and imagined I had some idea of what would happen in the weeks to come. Because the dates were neatly lined up, I couldn’t imagine life becoming disordered.

This year, that whole idea seems a little preposterous.

Because I never really knew what would happen in the coming week -- that was the lesson learned in 2020. This year, I won’t be nearly so confident as Januari turns to Februari and then Mars.

Of course, I am optimistic, as I always am. I am hoping this new year will bring sweet things. But now I’m thinking having my weeks laid out oddly -- with the months written in a foreign language, surrounded by flowers I can’t identify -- may be an appropriate way to look at the coming year.

This year may require some translation. It may require a little study. This whole year is a big Swedish surprise, waiting to happen.

And maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

A fellow I know was grousing about the past year.

His birthday was coming up and he felt, once again, that this year failed to meet his expectations. He was unhappy with the year, unhappy with himself, unhappy with the fact that he’d even allowed himself to hope that 2020, of all years, was going to be better than the previous ones.

“My caring isn’t going to make any difference in how things work out,” he told me. “When I step back to accept that reality, maybe I’ll stop thinking any of it matters.”

He was unhappy with the idea that he’d gotten his hopes up at all. He seemed to feel that expecting something better in the coming year was a sucker’s game and he was determined not to fall for it again.

I didn’t say anything to him. I didn’t make any chipper remarks because I knew he wasn’t looking for advice. He was looking for commiseration for what he saw as a lost and wasted year. But I did spend some time thinking about his complaints, and I decided that if I had offered my advice, I’d have told him to go clean out his refrigerator.

I know I’m not the only one who lets the refrigerator fill up with plans that didn’t work out, ideas I lost interest in, unfinished meals I always thought I’d get back to. The new year is an excellent time to take a peek at what’s lurking in the corners and drag it all out and look at it under a good strong light.

Throw out the sweet and sour sauce of frustrated expectations. Pitch that packet of expired yeast for the hopes that will never rise and, instead, take out the sourdough starter and get something new going, something you can pass on to your friends.

Quit saving the fancy mustard for a special occasion. Today is special. Put that mustard on a hot dog tonight and call it a party -- even if you are all by yourself.

Take out those empty containers that used to be full of the things you liked. You’re not going to enjoy those things anymore. Get rid of the reminders. Throw out the empties.

At least once a year, I have to take a good hard look at all the stuff that has accumulated on my shelves and ask myself, “Does this make me happy? Or is it just a leftover idea of a meal I am never going to eat?”

If I can still imagine the person who might eat it, then I’ll clean up the bottle, wipe down the shelf, and place it front and center where I won’t forget it. But if I can’t imagine ever wanting that bottle of whatever it is again -- I’m not thinking twice. I’m going to throw it away and get on with my cleaning.

But, most importantly, I’m leaving room in my refrigerator for new stuff.

I can’t get excited about cooking something new if my refrigerator is piled high with junk I no longer need or want or care about. The new year is a good time to be honest about this. I used to be a grape jelly kind of person. I’m not anymore -- and that’s OK. It’s no crime to admit things have changed.

I’m going to clean those shelves until they shine and leave a little room for all the meals I cannot yet imagine, for all the tasty treats I’ve been promising myself one day. The day has come. I’m going to need some shelf space.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

Whatever you think about Christmas, I think you would have to agree we need one this year.

Everyone I know seems determined to do as much Christmas as it is possible to do. My pastor announced at the beginning of Advent that we were going to have 26 consecutive Zoom Advent services.

“We’re having 15 minutes of Advent reflections EVERY night!” she announced.

“Surely she means every week,” most of the congregation thought.

“EVERY night!” she repeated for clarification.

“I am not Zooming every single night of Advent,” I thought. “That’s just excessive.”

But after the first night, I looked forward to the second night and then it became a habit and, after a few nights, I couldn’t imagine missing my little 15-minute dose of Christmas hope and positivity and fellowship. Fifteen minutes was just enough to settle my thoughts. There was music. I was asked to read a couple of times. We all waved “hello” at the beginning and, before we knew it, we were waving “goodbye.” I can’t remember ever feeling the approach of the Christmas season so intimately, so incrementally, so intensely.

I’ve heard there is a worldwide shortage of Christmas trees.

Folks who haven’t bothered to put up a tree in years decided this was the year. Usually, if I have a tree at all, I look for a skinny tree I can stash in the corner and still have room for company. Not this year.

This year, I got a big fat tree fresh off the truck. I figured no one else was using the space so, instead of tucking it in the corner, I set it smack-dab in the middle of the room. When I came down the next morning, that tree had doubled in size. My husband, Peter, was completely hidden behind it, as if he were reading the news in the forest.

I’m embracing every-night-Advent and the world’s fattest Christmas tree because there is so much else that won’t be the same and, of course, I will miss it.

There will be no crush of middle-aged cousins getting together on Christmas Day. My mom won’t host Christmas brunch and we won’t open presents together and I won’t hear my niece and nephew play piano in church. None of the things that have made Christmas seem like Christmas will happen, and yet I am looking forward to the day with a peculiar fervor.

I think about people long ago who watched as the days grew shorter and the nights got longer and the weather grew colder and their supplies dwindled. When the winter solstice arrived, they needed to assure themselves that the darkness would end. They needed to pull together whatever sort of comforts they could manage and thumb their noses at the cold and dark and growing fear that spring might never come, that the sun might simply disappear one afternoon and never return.

So they had a party.

I’m sure most of the parties were small, as Peter’s and mine will be. But they would eat something special and haul something green into the house and build a bigger fire than usual and reassure themselves that the dark and cold and loneliness would end and a better day would come.

And that’s what we’re doing this year.

We’re going to huddle around our Zoom and our oversized tree and eat a little extra peppermint ice cream and Peter’s good ginger cookies and be grateful for everything we have and more grateful yet that this time -- this dark time -- will slowly but surely be coming to an end.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION