The sander was heavier than I expected.
Ron dropped it off on a Tuesday evening and showed Nate how to change the paper.
He also brought an extension cord.
"Don't push too hard," he told Nate. "Let the machine do the work."
Nate listened carefully.
Ron had spent years repairing farm equipment.
He knew the difference between a tool that needed pressure and one that needed patience.
When he left, Nate looked at the sander.
"That will save us hours."
I smiled.
"It will save your shoulders, too."
He laughed.
We worked on the porch over the next several evenings.
Nate sanded the boards while I swept away the dust and checked the areas near the railing.
The work was noisy and tiring.
But the surface gradually became smooth.
When we finished, I stood near the steps and ran my hand along the wood.
It felt different from the rough boards we had first found.
I could imagine what it would look like with a fresh coat of paint.
We waited for a dry stretch of weather before beginning.
In the meantime, I took photographs.
The porch before sanding.
The porch after sanding.
The tools lined up near the wall.
Nate standing with the borrowed sander.
I wanted to remember the process.
Opal's advice had stayed with me.
When a job was finished, it was easy to forget how difficult the beginning had been.
A week later, she came to visit.
She brought a small container of biscuits and asked to see the porch.
Nate showed her the repaired boards.
She walked carefully along the steps, testing the railing with one hand.
"That's much better."
"We're hoping to paint it this weekend," I said.
"Good. Make sure the wood is dry."
Nate nodded.
"We checked the forecast."
Opal smiled.
"You two have become very organized."
"We had to be."
She looked at the house.
"There's nothing wrong with planning carefully."
We went inside and made tea.
The kitchen was cleaner than it had been when we first bought the property.
The cabinets were usable.
The window let in plenty of light.
We had installed shelves along one wall, and I had begun keeping a few cooking supplies there.
The house was still unfinished.
But it no longer felt like a place we were borrowing from the past.
It was becoming our own.
Opal sat at the table and examined the photographs on my phone.
I showed her the porch before and after sanding.
She studied both pictures.
"Keep those."
"I will."
"And print a few."
I laughed.
"Who prints pictures anymore?"
"People who want to look at them when their phones stop working."
She had a point.
I promised I would print some when I had time.
Then she asked me to bring out the photographs she had given me earlier.
I fetched them from the drawer.
We spread them across the table.
The old pictures showed Opal and her husband standing outside their first house.
The walls had been weathered.
The yard had been bare.
One photograph showed her holding a paintbrush beside a window.
Another showed her husband kneeling near a pile of lumber.
I had seen the pictures before, but this time I noticed something I had missed.
They looked happy.
Not because their house was finished.
Because they were working on it together.
"Did you ever wish you'd bought something newer?" I asked.
Opal considered the question.
"Sometimes."
I looked at her.
"Really?"
"Of course. There were days when I wished we could have moved into a house where everything worked."
She touched one of the photographs.
"But we couldn't afford that. We bought what we could manage, and we improved it as we went."
"Did your family help?"
"Some people did. Some didn't."
She didn't sound bitter.
She sounded as though she had accepted a fact of life.
"Did that bother you?"
"At the time, yes."
She looked at me.
"Don't let anyone tell you that being disappointed makes you ungrateful. You can appreciate what you have and still wish someone had treated you differently."
I felt the words settle inside me.
For months, I had tried to make my disappointment disappear by reminding myself that nobody owed us anything.
That was true.
But it wasn't the whole truth.
I could be grateful for our savings.
I could be proud of Nate's work.
I could love our house.
And I could still feel hurt by the way his parents had treated us.
Those feelings didn't cancel one another out.
I looked at the photograph of Opal beside the window.
"You must have been very tired."
She laughed.
"More tired than I wanted to admit."
I smiled.
"That sounds familiar."
She reached across the table and squeezed my hand.
"Then learn from me. Rest when you can. Ask for help when it makes sense. Don't spend your whole life trying to prove you deserve what you already have."
I looked down at our photographs.
The bluebird card was in the drawer nearby.
I no longer needed to read it to remember what it said.
The words had become part of our history.
But they no longer controlled the way I thought about our future.
Opal stayed for lunch.
Nate made sandwiches, and we ate at the kitchen table.
Afterward, she asked whether we planned to invite the family over when the house was ready.
I hadn't thought that far ahead.
"Maybe."
"Why not?"
I looked toward Nate.
He shrugged.
"I don't mind having people over."
I thought about Judy standing in the kitchen, admitting that she had not understood how her praise had sounded.
I thought about Ron lending us the sander.
I thought about Kim calling to ask how we felt.
None of those moments erased the original hurt.
But they reminded me that people could learn.
"I'd like to have everyone here eventually," I said.
Opal nodded.
"Then you should."
I wasn't ready to promise a date.
The house still needed work.
We still had to make sure we could afford the next stage of repairs.
But the idea no longer frightened me.
I could imagine inviting our relatives without feeling that we were showing off.
I could imagine letting them see what we had built without turning the house into evidence in an old argument.
That evening, after Opal left, Nate and I began preparing the porch for paint.
We checked the boards again.
We swept the dust from the corners.
We covered the nearby surfaces and set the paint cans where we could reach them easily.
Before we started, I took one more photograph.
The porch was bare wood.
The steps were clean.
The paintbrushes rested beside the cans.
Nate stood at the edge of the picture, holding the lid.
I looked at the photograph.
It wasn't a picture of a finished house.
It was a picture of the work still happening.
I liked it better that way.
The finished porch would be worth celebrating.
But the unfinished one reminded me of something I didn't want to forget.
We had not reached this point because life had been easy.
We had reached it because we kept making decisions, even when we were tired.
We had worked.
We had saved.
We had asked questions.
We had accepted help when it was offered.
And we had finally begun telling the truth about what hurt.
I put the phone away.
Nate opened the paint can.
The smell filled the air.
We started with the railing, working slowly from one end to the other.
The first coat looked uneven.
We knew it would need time to dry.
We knew there would be places to touch up.
That was all right.
For once, we weren't trying to finish everything in one night.
We were learning to let a good thing take the time it needed.
Click here to continue reading: PART 13: The Morning After We Painted the Porch, Judy Called With an Invitation That Made Me Wonder Whether Our Family Was Finally Learning to Talk Honestly
Everyone at the Easter Table Received an Envelope, but Only One Couple Was Told They Needed Nothing
Part 12 of 20
