Illustration: Katy Lemay
Being born on January 1 makes a calendar a timely birthday gift. Over the years, I’ve received calendars devoted to sports history, cartoons from The New Yorker, and word origins. However, the calendar with the biggest impact has been the smallest one.
In 1963, I was seven years old when Mary Wilk, my paternal grandmother, traveled to Long Island to visit my aunt Marge, her youngest child. Upon her return to New Jersey, Nanny gave me a gift from her trip: a calendar that served as a souvenir of New York City, a place that I, living in the small town of Westville, Gloucester County, could only imagine with a sense of wide-eyed wonder.
Measuring two inches wide and about four inches high, the calendar featured artwork of three city landmarks: the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty and Coney Island. You change the date by flipping over the centerpiece each day. On either side are knobs to change the month and the day of the week. It doesn’t have a year, so it is a calendar that never goes out of date.
Photo: Courtesy of Maria Wilk
From childhood to senior citizenship, the calendar has been a constant in my life and is now kept on my bedroom dresser. I’ve taken it to the four South Jersey homes in which I’ve lived in and to my Rider dormitory in the 1970s.
After Nanny died of a cerebral hemorrhage at 66, six days before Christmas 1970, I came to view the calendar as a connection between past and present.
It brought back memories of the times we shared. My grandparents lived three blocks from my elementary school in Westville, so I would often stop there after classes ended. Nanny provided a sympathetic ear as I recounted how school went and what I learned.
Photo: Courtesy of Tom Wilk
Under her direction, I learned to play pinochle. She served me my first cup of instant coffee (Sanka) and introduced me to homemade barley soup and lekvar cake, a prune-filled pastry that was part of her Eastern European heritage.
Nanny lived a life of challenges, having married as a teenager, and had two children, including my dad, before her 19th birthday. She and my grandfather would go on to raise four children during the Great Depression, see the births of nine grandchildren, and celebrate 50 years of marriage.
She was one of the most selfless people I have known. She became the primary caregiver for my grandfather for a decade after he suffered a stroke in 1960 and could not walk on his own. She took the vow “in sickness and in health” seriously and strove to maintain a positive attitude.
More than six decades later, her gift has become more than a way to measure the passage of days. It’s an enduring reminder of her goodness and perseverance in the face of adversity.
Tom Wilk has visited the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building. He still hopes to make it to Coney Island.
[RELATED: Local Journalist Finds His First Reporter’s Notebook—and a Passageway to the Past]
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