An Offer We Dare Not Refuse

IT is a blizzard in September. A blizzard of calendars for the new year: huge wall calendars, tiny, wallet-size calendars, desk calendars, pocket-size. They come in the mail every day, they accost you in school, yeshivah, shul; they find you at meetings, lectures, street kiosks.

I would love to ward off the thought that another year has gone by, but there is no avoiding it: The ineluctable truth is that if a new year is coming, then that must mean that another year has gone by. It would be pleasant not to think about the past year, about the might-have-beens and the should-haves, and the what-ifs and the who-knows, but, caught in this blizzard, I can think of nothing but calendars.

Which is too bad, because there are certain things I might want to correct. Is there any way to make changes in that old year and make it better? Any way to re-do it, re-write it, re-enact certain events, re-speak certain words? Any way to have used time more effectively, to have squandered less of it? Any way to hold on to it, not let it disappear into the dusty file of gone and forgotten? To transform yesterdays into todays and tomorrows? To futurize the past? In a moment of 3 a.m. daftness, desperate measures occur to me: I could refuse to toss out the old calendar, could refuse to recognize the chutzpah and disrespect of the new year that brazenly pushes out the old. But by cold morning light, I realize that that would only confuse things.

Calendars are the shock troops of their  tough, unrelenting taskmaster, Time. Time possesses powerful troops: clocks, watches, and calendars, and these, as attractive as some of them are, can be very cruel: They have no respect for age, status, experience. They allow no appeals, they have no mercy. Nothing can resist their power, nothing can stand in their way. The old year has come to an end. There is no turning back, no appeal. The end. Period.