We have always homeschooled in a small space. On our kitchen table and snuggled up on the couch. I tried not to resent it. In fact I tried to embrace that we weren’t mimicking school at home but we were truly “home”schooling. But a part of me, a part that was squished down deep inside me, longed for the space to work on big projects and leave them there until the next day. To be able to keep our kitchen table clean for meals instead of eating around the latest science project or pushing aside our art until it eventually just gets shoved back into the closet because we couldn’t do both the art project and the science project on the same table and eat there.
We searched for a place to rent. It wasn’t something that I said out loud. I wasn’t ready to admit to myself but I wanted a schoolroom or dedicated space for learning. Whether that was in the dining room and we needed a big enough kitchen to also eat in or if it was a spare bedroom. But it was there in my mind as we looked at so many homes.
We found a beautiful apartment. It is on the third floor of a multifamily home. It has a large open floor plan with the kitchen, dining, and living room all in one big space. It has 4, four, bedrooms. One for Bryan and I, another for Oliver, one for Adelaide, and one glorious spare room. For guests, just kidding, kind of, I am going to have a space for learning.
This is so exciting but it is also making it hard to live in the moment. We can’t move in until the end of October. That’s another month of small space living in a city. Our temp housing is beautiful and in a great location. But the kitchen table is so small and there is no storage that it makes me miss our old set up. It makes me grateful for what we had. For our big glass doors that led out to a small patch of grass for the kids to run in. For our big conference room table. Plenty of bookshelves to store tools and books. A comfy couch to snuggle up on in front of our electric fireplace to read. I really miss our electric kettle that heated water quickly for moments that we needed a little extra comfort during difficult moments.
I know that those moments will return and that I will greet them with more fullness now that I have felt their absence. We are making new moments and we are growing into a different family. I think we are changing for the better. I HOPE we are changing for the better.
I can prepare for the future but I still need to hold these moments near and dear. Appreciate them for what they are. Embrace the time that we have now.
