The Postscript: Swedish surprise

My 2021 calendar is hanging from the closet door.

Every year I’ve lived in this house, I’ve gotten a cloth calendar, hung from a dowel. My mother’s mother always had a cloth calendar hanging in the farmhouse kitchen. As soon as the year was over, the calendar would be conscripted into use, usually to cover cinnamon rolls as they rose, to keep them moist until they were large enough to put into the oven.

Arriving at the farmhouse and seeing “1963” covering a pile of soon-to-be-baked sweet rolls was a wonderful sight, and I will forever associate those cloth calendars with the anticipation of sw...