The Parent Calendar

Happy New Year!  At least that’s what my friend proposes and I think it’s a grand idea.  Why shouldn’t the new year begin on September 1st?  This month is brimming with newness, while January 1^st seems little more than an arbitrary Hallmark holiday invented by champagne promoters and limousine services.  I get that the Greeks in their spooky wisdom dreamt up the calendar that we use today working off the Roman, Julian and Gregorian calendars’ tweaks.  I’m sure the calendar nerds of their time were inspired by the lunar phases and possibly nudged by the farming seasons and certainly not Dick Clark’s whims nor a concern for keeping the sequin trade alive.  But ours is not the only calendar out there—the Hebrew, Hindu, Burmese and Buddhists all have their own calendars, to name just a few.  So I’m proposing another calendar, one that begins on the first day that all your children go back to school: The Parent Calendar.

The new year of The Parent Calendar begins the moment that your last child rounds a corner and is out of sight after the bell rings.  Each drop-off mom and dad in North America throws up a handful of biodegradable confetti in the very spot where they stand although some parents drop to their knees, weeping.  A rolling cavalcade of cheering and whooping can be heard throughout the land between 8:10am and 9:15am in every time zone while the FCC commandeers all radio stations and has them play “What a Diff’rence a Day Makes” by Dinah Washington.  All leaf blowers are duly hobbled for the day so that stay-at-home parents may go directly home and take a nap and drink carts roll up and down the aisles of all the major commuter trains and busses where free margaritas and mimosas are passed out to all the working parents, courtesy of the board of education.

This celebratory mood of levity and relief following the Parents’ New Year doesn’t last long, however.  Almost immediately The Parent Calendar begins to buckle under the oppressive weight of The Sports Calendar.  With new classes and teachers, the new year ushers in familiar homework struggles and age-old battles over daily electronics usage.  Autumn leaves will soon obscure the last remnants of confetti absorbed into the damp, muddy ground, and leaf blowers will ruin all potential opportunities for peaceful work-from-home days. 

But, buck up, parents.  You still have a good week of New Year’s celebration ahead of you.  The weather is cool and crisp and there are no science projects due for at least a month.  This is The Parent Calendar’s golden time: after the humidity has left the air for good and before you have to switch your family over to fall clothes; after the mosquitoes have all died or flown south for the winter and before you have to worry about ordering holiday cards; after the pool closes—sadly—but before the first frost.  It’s a new year, parents.  Make it a happy one.