Calendar

Dec 30 2019

My real estate agent

sent me a calendar and card

in an elegantly lettered envelope.

As he has reliably done

for the past 25 years

since he sold me this house.

Apparently, he is a patient man,

content to enter

his second quarter century

waiting for me to move out.

And old-school, as well;

a paper calendar

postal mail.

It's a handy size

with a magnet on the back.

So I attach it to the fridge door

where it best catches the eye,

confronting me

with the passage of time

whenever I reach for a snack.

The stock pictures

of baby animals

and natural vistas,

the glossy pages

I one-by-one tear off.

300 months, so far

and counting.

A long time

to have remained fixed.

All my things

in their familiar places

if a little worse for wear,

the genteel shabbiness

of a contented man

who tends toward complacency.

And the concrete foundation

that has nicely settled in

to this shallow sandy earth,

the thin soil

where little grows

but black spruce flourishes.

How persistent we are, how steadfast.

The real estate agent

who isn't “mine” at all.

I, a model of stability

but perhaps more stuck than stable.

And those sparse and witchy trees

whose tenacity and hardiness

I can't help but admire.

Yes, the house could use a coat of paint

the roof a few new shingles.

As I, too

have gotten thinner on top.

While what were saplings, once

now crowd against the sun,

and the older trees

rot from inside out.

But the same picture

of a square-jawed young man

has appeared on each calendar

year after year;

frozen

on a disposable document

that is all about transience

and keeping track.

The inexorable passage of time,

only he

has somehow contrived to evade.

Actually, it's a husband and wife team: Glen and Carmen Kannegiesser. As the name suggests, he's of Finnish stock, and very much does have the square-jawed handsomeness of his people. But the picture has never changed; and even though it hardly feels it, it actually has been 25 years since I last saw him: surely, the passage of time must show in his face as much as it does in mine.

I value loyalty, admire persistence, and commend entrepreneurialism. And I am very much a creature of habit who resists change. So if I ever were to move (however the prospect of moving offends my essential nature!) I'd probably give him a call. Because there is something reassuring about this calendar, reliably arriving each year during the holiday season. In a world of vertiginous and alarming change, a grounding ritual – even one so minor – is welcome.

It's all about the appeal to me of stability: the ritual of the calendar, the changeless picture. Along with the presumption of our ongoing relationship as client and agent; caught just as it was, in the amber of a quarter century.