Almanacs and Grandmas

Every day, of every year, for as long as I can remember, my grandmother would open up her Old Farmer's Almanac and tell us about the forecasted weather, when the sun rose and when it would set that day. It was something my grandmother would do as regularly as the tide coming in and the changing of seasons. Everyone listened politely and then promptly forgot by getting busy with whatever they had to do that day. She never did. If you stopped her and asked later in the day, she would tell you promptly what time the sun would set. I never stopped to ask if she remembered the sun rise for Tuesday, three weeks before.

I can remember Grandma sitting in her green chair on many a Sunday afternoon, almanac with the cover folded back either reading intently or laughing. Often she'd come around later with a juicy something that might tempt us to engage in conversation. Sometimes we did. Most times I met her with a, “hmmm interesting” and be done with it.

When Grandma wasn't looking, I would curl up in her chair and read her almanacs. There was all kinds of interesting stuff. I found articles about dogs, stories about small town heroes or a gardening piece about some something I might be interested in when I got older. If I flipped long enough, there would be something to interest even a 15 year old. I know there was more than a few Sunday afternoons that I spent hours reading and re-reading the current year's content. And Grandma would always come after me if her almanac wasn’t sitting next to her Bible on the bookcase with her glasses, beside her green chair.

Of course when I got married and moved to New England from Pennsylvania, I got busy with life. I didn't miss Grandma's morning reports. I was worried about missing socks, dinner and my painful realization that I didn’t fully know what I had gotten myself into. (Five months of 24 hour morning sickness will do that to a woman newly married and removed far away from family.) So the daily almanac information got relegated to a dusty shelf in the back of my mind. But when Grandma came to visit for the week or the weekend, she never left her almanac at home. Out came the reports over breakfast.

Grandma died unexpectedly three days before we packed up to move cross country. I couldn't make the funeral because I was 6 weeks from delivering our fourth child and the movers would be there the day of the funeral. It was Fargo or bust – literally. Grandma was gone and the family would see me later. Grandma had always hoped I’d have a girl. Unfortunately, she never got to know God answered her prayer.

When I went through Grandma's things to help Mom two Novembers ago, I found an enormous collection of Old Farmer's Almanacs going back into the 1950s. I laughed out loud at the find. I should have known! It was a defining moment for me. I realized just how much she valued the information about the workings of Creation. Something resonated deep inside of me. I went home and bought the current edition then spent the afternoon reconnecting with my heritage.

For me, it almost seems irreverent that at this very moment you can go to almanac.com. There you can type in your zip code and it will tell you the rising and setting times of the sun. You can find out what happened today in history, what the weather did and garner the Advice of the Day which is: To avoid dying, don't sing in bed. And that’s just a sampling.

There's something quaint about going to the actual book, with cover and newsprint, flipping the pages and skimming the charts. Call me nostalgic, but there’s a connection there. There is a hand reaching out from ages past that draws us into the seasons of our heritage. I guess for me it’s not so much a connection to the earth itself, as it is a connection to my grandmother. But I know her connection to it was her love of nature because she loved God and what he created.

The Lord admonished the Children of Israel over and over throughout Scripture to “be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.” (Deuteronomy 4:9) To me, the almanacs are a testimony of remembering. They remind me of my grandmother who lay awake night after night trying to get me to remember the Lord’s Prayer and the Twenty-third Psalm. They are a testimony of a woman who loved creation and the God who created it. It’s something that needs to be remembered.

When I saw the 2007 version of The Old Farmer’s Almanac at the grocery store tonight, I bought it. I put it beside the 2006 copy on the bookshelf on my desk. I think I’ll have the boys pull it out tomorrow morning for breakfast…