It is late afternoon in mid-July, I stand in our motel’s lobby checking people in. I greet them, fill out paperwork, ask them about their plans while they stay with us, and often suggest restaurants and day tours. I am physically present but my mind keeps slipping back and forth. Sixteen years have passed since the day we took over our mom-and-pop motel on July 4th, 2007. It was fully occupied that day. Cars were parked everywhere, and people stepped into the lobby with multiple requests. The departing owners, a couple with twelve years of experience and much younger than us, said reassuringly that all was going to be OK and left. He went to one side of the town, and she drove a U-Hall towards the main road going to Florida. It’s a scene often seen at the end of many years of working side by side, we were told. Don’t say you were not warned.
They promised to train us before they left, and indeed we got one day of training going quickly over the different functions, from laundry to food serving to reserving rooms. They were clearly in a hurry to split their lives, and we were in the way.
We were panicked-stricken as we knew next to nothing about the motel's daily routine and hurdles. But we were committed to the task at hand and vowed to perform it well, which we did.
This summer, we’re going to leave the motel for good. I am amazed that while the past appears surprisingly clear, the future, only three months away, is wrapped in fog.
When I look back, as we so often do at these transitional moments, I realize that this one is going to be my third retirement. I guess the former two did not work out and now it is my chance to do it right. In my head, I go over the other times I attempted to retire. To avoid repeating what I did in the past, I try to pinpoint the details. The other two times, I resisted the idea. Retirement was more of an exercise or a warm-up toward the real thing. I went through the motions, collected my paychecks, and kept on working. This practice of retiring and resuming work, I thought, could go on incessantly, but now we have arrived at the moment of truth, and the one thing I know for sure is that we’re now experienced in the art of hospitality and the ins and outs of operating a business as a couple 24/7, but even more importantly, we will walk away together. I am mortified but also excited. Change is coming, and I know I am finally up to it.