Calendar Days

A calendar hangs in every room in her life.
Kitchen, living room, bedroom, office.
Some are simple, perfunctory, with sans serif numbers and plenty of room for writing
  appointments and events. Others are more stylized, decorative, their sole purpose
    a reminder of the days that pass and the days to come.
She never flips backward to the days that have passed, but
  she brings them up often, usually as ammunition to express
    disappointment. Regret. The unwillingness to part with transgressions of those who have hurt her.
The days to come loom with milestones:
A graduation,
A cross country move,
The forging of new lives for children whose very pursuit of happiness
  has left her trailing in the dust.
Her time with a daughter who is both her fiercest love and worst foe
  is numbered by those calendar days.
Days that pass altogether too slowly, yet too quickly
She berates her daughter's lack of fruitful direction and the wayward path that has led her to the
  stagnant here and now,
She reminds her of her naive indecision and missteps
  as if these reminders will change what has already come to pass.
Yet buried in those future pages of her calendars, just a few flips ahead,
  marks her daughter's departure,
    when she will embark on a journey away from her misguided past,
      when she, in the arms of the man she loves, will leave her family behind.
Before that departure is another day, marked only a short week away from today,
  the day her youngest leaves his sheltered schooling for the uncharted depths of reality.
Further back, much further back, embedded in calendars of the years past, are days of
  worry, of uncertainty that he would ever see this day -
    that he would see this day on time.
In only a short week is the culmination of her constant vigilance of his days, but it will only lead to
  more days. These days are not marked, cannot be marked, not even on the sans serif calendars
    because they are endless with possibility and the unknown.
She bemoans this unknown to him, her youngest - that is, in the rare minutes he will listen -
  just as she does to her daughter, just as she does to
    her oldest, who despite having rained the worst possible reality on her
  (on a day whose concrete memory she has long disposed of, only his words forever etched in her
  mind, haunting, though she rarely speaks the word itself - gay - instead naming it his situation)
    is the only one who has soothed her worries with
      measurable success, realized ambition.
Although her oldest fills her calendar with the dates of business trips, conventions,
  indicators of his recognized leadership,
    she cannot see any semblance of his perfect wife and future family,
      of the joy that comes with this nuclear vision.
She speaks of the pages and pages of uncharted calendar dates in the language of concern and of caution,
  with purported intention to prepare them for life,
    for comfort,
      success and happiness,
    but her words are lost on them as they look forward with bright, expectant eyes,
      optimistic and idealistic,
        without the same regard to the discarded, bygone days.
To them, the calendar is
  a catalog of hope and opportunity,
    an endless trove of potential that will lead them
      further and further from their past -
        further from home.