Change is in the air!
It’s spring, although it was only about 45° today.
The Farmer’s Market was open downtown, with
crafts and bread, fruits and vegetables, and garden plants.
We’ve already frosted one pumpkin and killed a
few tomatoes in our garden. But John,
the eternal optimist, has been planting more.
Most everything is up: little beets and chard, more pumpkins and
tomatoes, onions that overwintered, bush beans and carrots, the peas, and one
potato!
Other changes are around the bend. John turned sixty-five last week, and we’ve
been thinking long and hard about what we’d like to do when we "grow up". Retirement sounds like fun although John is
concerned about how he’ll turn out without our guests to keep him anchored in adult
reality!
The trouble is we’re not sure how to retire without selling
the motel, and we’re really attached to this place. The few times over the years that we’ve
mentioned selling out, various family members and guests have reacted like Dr.
Seuss’ characters in Thidwick the
Big-Hearted Moose. When Thidwick
tried to cross to the south side of Lake Winna-Bango, the guests in his horns
raised a ruckus: “He stepped in the
water. Then, oh! What a fuss! ‘STOP!’ screamed his
guests. ‘You can’t do this to us!’” But Thidwick eventually shed his guests along
with his horns, and swam to the south shore. What should we do?
Our second daughter, Ruth, wants to manage the motel
beginning in the fall of 2014. When we
bought it in 1991 from my parents (who’d owned it 19 years), it was an easy
transition. But the global, digital
economy that we’re facing today is a far cry from the simple one we bought
into. Our daughter can’t afford to buy
us out, or we’d gladly let her. But if we can find a way for this to work, her children will be the 4th
generation in our family to make the beds and tend to our motel guests.
We do love the interactions with our guests. We enjoy sharing our home with them. It’s satisfying to see the weight of the world
fall from their shoulders as they wander the grounds, taking pictures of the flowers
and resting in the shade of hundred-year-old trees. The flowering crab trees have just finished
blooming, the flowerbeds are gorgeous with orange poppies and regal lupines,
and the lilac scent lingers into the evening.
On this first day of summer, I found it refreshing to pause and enjoy the
moment.
But 24/7/365 is tough.
When we want to go out together, we get a “baby-sitter” for the
motel. Going on vacation ourselves is a
major event. We’d like to wander around
the country for a while, letting somebody else tend our “baby.” We’d like to bask in the winter sun sometimes
without bundling up. We’d like to turn
off the phones and check in with the kids only when we feel like it.
So we wanted to give you a “heads up,” but we’d
appreciate your advice, too. You’ve been
incredibly supportive of our little business over the years, and we thank
you. Therefore we’re open to a bit of
brainstorming here, if you have ideas you’d like to share with us about passing
the baton. What would you like to see
Ruth do with the place? What should we
change? What do you most want us to
keep?
