birthday boy

Yesterday I bought a 2011 calendar.  A big decision, every year.  Into what container will I be counting down my life?


This year's was a plain, just-the-facts day-by-day in a faux medieval binding.  In truth, I didn't buy it until May and paid 50% off the normal price, surprised that the rest of the world was already five months into another year.  Looking back, a lot of white space remains.  


For 2011, I wanted something that, in itself, would be sufficient; a Sabbath calendar, existing outside of time.  So I rejected the dailys filled with flowers or famous paintings; ditto for those designed for writers, for runners, for procrastinators (I'll think about this one).


In the end I chose one new to me:  Chris Hardman's Ecological Calendar: A New Way to Experience Time. While small print follows the Gregorian Calendar, front-and-center is a reminder that our days are more than "a march of numbers, a business machine telling us when to be where."


This calendar reminds us where we already are, infinitesimally small creatures on a tiny plant circling a star that is one of 200 billion in our Milky Way galaxy, and the Milky Way is one of at least 200 billion galaxies in a universe about 13.7 billion years old.


This is not to say we are insignificant, or that how we use our time is trivial. Even if the day is "blank," we are part of something ancient, magnificent, and beyond our ultimate comprehension.


So I think these thoughts as I weep on Rich's birthday. Not because his life was so small, because I now understand how one life, deeply lived with another, can contain it all.  And I don't think it's a coincidence that this day which we call Tuesday, 9 November, is in the calendar marked as "ForestMulch" in the season "Fall of the Leaf."  


And a sweet-fragranced rose is in front of me, picked this morning, the last of the season.


Candace