Intro
ANNOUNCER: This is Open Chair, dramatizations from rooms where people tell the truth and nobody has to carry it alone. Tonight: My Name Is June.
Opening
MEETING CHAIR: Good morning, everyone. We have the room for another hour. You can speak, pass, or just listen. Nobody has to arrive with a lesson already figured out.
MEETING CHAIR: June, you said you wanted to talk about the table.
JUNE: I did.
JUNE: My name is June, and I have not eaten at my dining table in six years.
MEETING CHAIR: Take your time.
JUNE: Thank you.
JUNE: It is still in the dining room. I know that sounds obvious. The table did not disappear. But I have not used it as a table since 2019.
JUNE: Right now it holds three sewing machines, a basket of yarn, two half-finished quilts, a box of watercolor paper, fabric that was supposed to become curtains, and a stack of magazines about rooms I do not live in.
JUNE: There are also four projects in progress that I have not touched in more than a year.
MEETING CHAIR: What happens when you look at the table?
JUNE: It depends on the day.
JUNE: Some days I see possibility. I think, I could make something beautiful here. I could finish the quilt. I could learn watercolor. I could become the kind of person who wakes up early, puts on music, and spends the morning making things with her hands.
JUNE: Other days I see a wall.
JUNE: Not a wall made of objects. A wall made of all the things I keep telling myself I will do.
The Person I Am Supposed to Become
JUNE: I retired three years ago. I had a whole plan for retirement. It was not a very specific plan, which should have been a clue.
JUNE: I was going to make things. I was going to take classes. I was going to invite people for lunch. I was going to have a house that felt warm and creative and open.
JUNE: I bought supplies for all of it.
MEETING CHAIR: Before you had time for it?
JUNE: Before I had time. Before I knew what I liked. Before I knew what kind of energy I would have.
JUNE: I bought a whole set of paints because the woman in the video used that exact set. I bought fabric because the pattern on the package looked like something I could make. I bought storage bins so I could organize the supplies I had not used yet.
JUNE: The storage bins are now holding other storage bins.
JUNE: I am not saying that as a joke, although it is a little funny.
JUNE: It also makes me tired.
JUNE: Every object on that table is connected to a version of June who is more patient, more energetic, more disciplined, and somehow less afraid of wasting a Saturday.
MEETING CHAIR: That sounds like a lot of people to live up to.
JUNE: It is one person. It is just a very demanding person.
JUNE: She is always about to begin.
JUNE: My sister came over last winter. She brought soup because I had been sick. She stood in the doorway and asked where she could put the pot.
JUNE: I said, just put it on the counter.
JUNE: The counter was full too.
JUNE: She looked at the dining room, then looked back at me. She did not say anything mean. She did not say anything dramatic. She just asked, “Do you still want this room to be for making things?”
JUNE: I said yes.
JUNE: She said, “Then maybe it needs to be for making one thing at a time.”
JUNE: I was furious.
MEETING CHAIR: At her?
JUNE: At her. At the table. At the paints. At myself for knowing she was right.
JUNE: I told her she did not understand. I told her that the supplies were expensive. I told her I had plans.
JUNE: She said, “I know you have plans. I am asking if your plans have any room for you.”
One Project
JUNE: I did not speak to her for two weeks.
JUNE: Then I went into the dining room and chose the quilt that was closest to finished.
JUNE: Not the prettiest one. Not the one that represented the most ambitious version of me. The one that needed four more rows.
MEETING CHAIR: Why that one?
JUNE: Because four rows felt possible.
JUNE: I moved everything else into boxes and put the boxes against the wall. I did not decide what would stay forever. I did not make myself answer what every scrap of fabric meant. I just made enough room to see the quilt.
JUNE: Then I sat down.
JUNE: I lasted twenty minutes.
JUNE: My back hurt. I could not find the right thread. I made a mistake and had to take out a row.
JUNE: It was not the peaceful creative morning I had imagined.
JUNE: It was me, in a chair, looking for a needle while the dog barked at a delivery truck.
JUNE: It was ordinary.
JUNE: I went back the next day.
JUNE: And the day after that.
JUNE: I finished the four rows over nine days.
MEETING CHAIR: What did finishing feel like?
JUNE: Smaller than I expected.
JUNE: I thought there would be music. Or relief. Or some kind of proof that I had become the person I was waiting for.
JUNE: Instead, I had a quilt that needed binding and a table with six boxes on it.
JUNE: But I also had a place to sit.
JUNE: My sister came over, and we ate sandwiches there. We moved the quilt to the couch. The table was not clear, exactly, but it was being used.
JUNE: I kept thinking, this counts.
Making Room for the Real Day
MEETING CHAIR: What are you noticing now?
JUNE: That I keep confusing a possible future with an obligation.
JUNE: If I buy the supplies, I feel responsible for becoming the person who uses them. If I keep the project, I feel responsible for finishing it. If I let it go, I worry I am letting go of the part of myself that wanted to make something.
JUNE: But a project can be meaningful without being permanent.
JUNE: I can appreciate the fabric and still decide it is not mine to carry into the next year.
MEETING CHAIR: That sounds like a different kind of decision than throwing everything away.
JUNE: It is.
JUNE: I am trying to ask a better question. Not, could I use this someday? Almost anything could be used someday.
JUNE: I ask, do I have a real place for this in the life I am living?
JUNE: Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes it is not yet. Sometimes it is no, and that does not make the money I spent meaningless or the person I was when I bought it foolish.
JUNE: Last Saturday, I cleared one end of the table.
JUNE: One end. Not the whole room.
JUNE: I put a lamp there and a little tray for the project I am actually working on. When I am done, the project goes on the tray. The tray goes on the shelf. The table can be used for something else.
MEETING CHAIR: What did you use it for?
JUNE: My neighbor came over for coffee.
JUNE: We sat at the table. We talked about her grandson. She brought a newspaper. I did not move the newspaper because I needed the table to stay ready for a project.
JUNE: I left it there until she went home.
JUNE: That felt almost rebellious.
MEETING CHAIR: A newspaper on the table?
JUNE: A newspaper on the table. A coffee cup. Two crumbs.
JUNE: The room looked lived in.
JUNE: I think I have spent years trying to make the room look like evidence of who I could be. I am starting to let it look like evidence that I am here.
Closing
MEETING CHAIR: Thank you, June.
MEETING CHAIR: Maybe the next step is not to solve every unfinished project. Maybe it is to notice which parts of the room are waiting for a future version of you, and which small part could support the person who is here today.
MEETING CHAIR: If your home has immediate safety concerns, blocked exits, fire risk, medical needs, or another urgent situation, please reach for qualified local help. You do not have to handle that alone.
MEETING CHAIR: For the rest of us, one honest decision can be enough for today. A table can hold a project. It can also hold coffee. It does not have to prove anything.
Outro
ANNOUNCER: You've been listening to Open Chair. These stories are dramatized, but the struggle is real. People first. Then the stuff.