Letters From a Wartime House
Letter Eleven: September Came All at Once
I missed last Sunday…
Not intentionally, exactly. There were simply a few more pieces of summer I wanted to hold onto before September completely took over. The last slow mornings, the sunshine, time with my family before school and work returned to their familiar rhythms…
… and then September did what September does.
It arrived all at once.
The first week back in the classroom left me feeling as though I had been dropped into a moving river and was expected to remember how to swim. There were routines to relearn, twenty little people to care for, things to prepare, things to remember, and the particular exhaustion that comes from being “on” all day.
Then there was Montessori Teacher’s College.
I had tried to prepare. I really had… but somewhere between miscommunication and crossed wires, I found myself scrambling on the evening of my online orientation, opening documents and trying to figure out what I was supposed to have already read.
Thirty minutes before it began, I logged in.
Thirty minutes.
This is NOT how I like to do things.
So there I sat, waiting to be admitted to the meeting, my web camera on, acutely aware that I was not feeling in the least bit prepared.
Then I looked at the screen.
More specifically, I looked at what was behind me.
My dining room.
I was sitting in what used to be the doorway into our old kitchen, looking straight ahead toward the front window.
That doorway doesn’t exist anymore.
Neither does the room quite look the way it once did.
For years, this dining room always felt like an afterthought. It was the room that never quite came together, no matter how many times I tried to make it work. I changed the furniture. I rearranged it. I bought different pieces. I moved things around and then moved them again.
Somehow, nothing ever felt quite right.
Eventually, we stopped trying to make the old room work and started changing the room itself.
We opened things up. We changed the layout. We replaced things that had needed replacing for years. We brought in new flooring. We replaced the windows. We painted. We moved furniture around again, but this time it wasn’t just rearranging what was there; it was slowly creating something different.
Even now, it isn’t finished.
We haven’t gotten into the ceiling yet. There are uneven paint lines that still drive me absolutely crazy and places where the paint is peeling. The newly replaced windows still need to be trimmed out. The flooring needs its finishing touches. There is a broken pane of glass in my hutch from the time the knob slipped out of my hand and the door slammed shut. There is furniture waiting patiently for the day I finally decide to refinish it.
There is still a list.
There is always a list.
But as I sat there waiting to be admitted to my orientation, something felt different. For the first time, I wasn’t looking at the room and seeing everything that still needed to be done.
I was looking at it and seeing what it had become.
It was beautiful.
Not perfect.
Not finished.
But beautiful.
I didn’t feel the familiar urge to hide my surroundings from the camera. I didn’t wish I could angle myself differently or move something out of frame.
I felt proud.
The room wasn’t an afterthought anymore. It was ours.
Somewhere along the way, “unfinished” had stopped meaning “wrong.”
The ceiling can wait.
The paint lines can annoy me for a little while longer.
The windows will get their trim.
The hutch will get its glass.
The furniture will eventually get its second life.
Perhaps that is what caught me off guard most about that little moment before orientation began. I had been feeling overwhelmed by everything that wasn’t prepared, everything I hadn’t anticipated, everything I still needed to learn, and there, behind me, was a quiet reminder that preparation does not always look like having everything done.
Sometimes it looks like years of slowly making something into your own.
Sometimes it looks like standing in the middle of a project and finally being able to see its shape.
Sometimes, when you are certain you are falling behind, you catch a glimpse of something you have been building all along.
Hope.
The meeting eventually began. I was still scrambling. I still had reading to do.
There was, and is, plenty that I don’t have figured out yet… but for those few minutes, sitting in front of that imperfect little corner of our dining room, I didn’t feel behind.
I felt hopeful.
Maybe that is enough preparation for now.
I will do my best to continue posting every Sunday, but I hope you’ll offer me a little grace if I miss a letter here and there.
Between teaching, going to school myself, caring for my family, and nurturing my friendships, my brain is in overdrive, and I don’t want this little blog to become a chore.
I want it to remain what it has always been: a place to pause, reflect, and share something honest when I have the space and capacity to do so.
Until next Sunday, or perhaps the Sunday after that,
Allison
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