Calender

              As a little girl, I looked forward to the start of winters all the time. Winters would always mean, yellow packets coming in the mailbox, that brought colorful calenders of various sizes and shapes for the oncoming year. My room would be filled with them, some on the walls, some on the table and some as book-markers tucked inside the pages of my books. The older calenders would not be discarded. The pictures would be neatly cut and filed and more importantly treasured like vital documents. The happy colors of the calender brought me a lot of sunshine and a lot of air in the gloomy room that my family could afford for their child's play and study space.
        It was a little space beneath the staircase and my mother had put on an old, slightly worn-out tablecloth to separate my area from the entrance doorway. Naturally that space had no window but had a big sized picture of Rocky Mountains, out of a calender of course, just in the place where I would have wanted my window. I had also managed to pin enormous number of calenders on the table cloth. I enjoyed watching the dates graduating to the next. Cause each day, brought in a fresh dream. A dream of visiting one of those destinations in those pictures.
         I do not quite remember, how and when these pictures ceased to have such a vital space in my life. Perhaps when the innocent optimism was killed and I stopped believing, I could ever be in those beautiful landscapes or own those wonderful things in the pictures.
        ...or was it because some strange desire took over like a momentary infidelity of looking into the eyes of a stranger, until met with a scowl by his escort. May be it was soccer with the local boys or was it swimming or books I can not say.
         My mom had however preserved them all and now when I travel and click pictures and send them home, she diligently brings out a picture from that entire lot of old calenders, bearing close similarity with a recent shot of mine. Perhaps she does this to preserve her daughter's faith in dreams. It is her manner of saying that dreams turn real.
(S smiles, takes off her reading glasses and admires her table calender. Off late, the calenders have sprung back to her life again.)

So, people suffer, toil and dream
Hope this winter fills you upto the brim.
And when difficult times draw your breath
Remember, you have strong teeth  ;)