2013 Day by Day Calendar
It is a year of The Calendar. And so, I’d like to tell of the birth and creation process of this crazy obsession I share with my daughter Lucie.
It started in 2001 or 2002…. I got a Sark calendar that featured heart-warming inspirational words for every day. Lucie and I loved turning the page every morning to see what each day’s thought was. But… we decided we could do better…. why not try it? And so it began. We collected quotes from everywhere… songs, poems, people, literature. We copied the gatherings into a composition book, and as the new year drew closer, started writing them into individual pages, organized as six small squares on a letter-sized page. We recognized dear ones’ birthdays, we drew funny little line drawings on some pages, we went to the library to search for quotes when we realized we were short. It was much more work than we had realized but we kept going. Then came the copying (a small fortune for my single mom budget), then came the collating. 365 pages, 50 copies. All by hand. And so the Day by Day Calendar was born.
I love the process. I love sharing the calendar. I love turning the pages myself every morning. I love going to the homes of calendar-owners and seeing what particular quotes make it up onto their fridges. I love that my ex-husband makes a personal vote of the “best quote of the year” as a very serious business. I love that my brother’s step-daughter used it as a lifeline during a long and distant yoga retreat. I love the connection with my teacher Rodney Smith because of his many contributions and mine in turn to his writing. I love that my dear mother-in-law keeps four previous editions in different spots in her house to look at every day. I love how a small tribe of calendar owners might be affected by the little wisdoms on any particular day.
The calendar is now a bi-annual endeavor. It takes two solid years of collecting, and writing and production, to create a one-year edition. Lucie lives far away but still collects and writes in the pages. This year my sister and my nieces Olivia and Luisa helped to collate, which was a wonderful (and festive) addition to the calendar collaboration.
These photos show this year’s calendar production from collection to writing to collation and finished edition (in our household’s spot by the coffeepot).
Collecting Quotes
Writing in the Pages
Collating the Pages with Ivy and Joe