A Day

Today was such a day. It had everything. Magic. Sweetness. Confrontation. Ugliness. In the end, lessons learned and moments of weakness overcome.

I learned what my priorities are—what they need to be, going forward.

A little woodpecker told me that it was the right thing to do, to go into the restaurant a little later, to take the time to run to the store and replenish my bird seed supply. No, he doesn't eat seeds. But he stopped by just to say, "Look. I'm pretty!"

Mr. Mojohowitz let me know that it met with his approval that I had procured a new carton of kitty cream on that same short shopping excursion. I left the house filled with love and hope for the day.

An ugly encounter with a customer, not twenty minutes after my arrival at the café, popped my hopes for the day like an over-inflated helium balloon. From full of promise to flat and empty, lying on the floor at my feet, in a matter of seconds.

I so fervently wanted to lock the doors forever, then and there; the fact that I knew that not to be feasible soured my mood and turned me to stone. I was miserable and I didn't care who knew it. I wanted to wallow.

But…I reached into my pocket and gripped my crystal—the rose quartz carved in the shape of a heart. And the thought came to me that everything is not about me; and so I sucked it up, slapped on a smile and sallied forth, for the benefit of those who would have to work side-by-side with me in my tiniest of kitchens.

I pretended to care. It's hard.

Today, the Universe showed me where my peace is. And where it isn't.

And left me once again counting the days.

One hundred and ten.

Maybe less, if I can work things out right.

However many, it won't be a day, a moment, too soon…

The Thing About Peace

"Don't let them steal your peace…" It seemed so simple the first time I heard it. Straightforward. Steadfast. Intentional. Don't. Let. Them. Steal. Your. Peace.

But like everything else, it's not as easy as it sounds. You have to HAVE peace before you can guard it. Sometimes I have it. Often times, I don't. And the times I have it, I wonder whether I really HAVE it, or if I'm just faking it. And faking is something I have never done well. Never liked doing, never wanted to do.

To my black and white little mind, faking feels dishonest; and I have always had a monstrous moral bias against lying. To the point where I am even unable to pad or cloak the truth in order to grease the works of a relationship or spare someone's feelings. Really, pathological honesty does not make one's life easy. It sucks, in fact. But it doesn't seem to be something I have the capacity to change.

So now, I've taken to wondering whether the peace I am trying to maintain is an authentic peace, or a manufactured one. Real or imitation. Live or Memorex…

The question I need to ask is, "Does it really matter?" If some degree of "faked" peace is keeping me from jumping out of my skin, or jumping off the nearest bridge, is it important that it isn't "real?" If clinging by my fingernails to a façade of serenity I've painstakingly erected—possibly without knowing it—helps me to fend off daily assaults to my bruised and battered psyche, who cares that it hasn't sprung spontaneously from some bottomless pacific well deep in my soul?

What does bother me some is that I feel compelled to live SO on the surface of things. I cannot plumb the depths of anything right now. I can't think about reasons or motivations or plans or reactions, for fear of handing away the peace--real or fake--that I'm trying so hard to protect. And that is so against my nature, I find that in itself is a source of irritation…that I dare not think about. Honestly, I don't know how long I can keep up the Scarlett O'Hara act: I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about it tomorrow…

So I huddle inside—or hide behind—my various incarnations of peace. Hoping that someday, the true peace will grow from within and meet up with the erected one, so that they become one and the same.

Meanwhile, I have to make it through the next four months and twenty-nine days using any and every resource available. Tomorrow is another day…

Wisdom From an Unexpected Source

Over the years, my landlord and I have developed an unusual sort of love/hate relationship. We respect each other; we each understand that we could have been stuck with a way worse landlord/tenant. We realize that we share a common work ethic, sense of responsibility and a sort of fantasy about fairness and justice in the world.

Be that as it may, he has always just…gotten on my nerves. Since he actually owned and ran the café for a year before we bought it, he hasn't been able to resist putting his two cents in on everything from menu changes to purveyors to personnel issues. And he has been so very present. It is unusual for more than a week to go by without seeing him in the restaurant or around the property. 

Since he does his own property maintenance and he refused to invest in sprinklers when he built the place, he is around every day in the summer—cutting grass, watering the lawn, fussing with one thing or another. I wonder how many other small business owners could have cheerfully tolerated such a hands-on, ever-present property owner?

Well, I have tolerated him…though not always cheerfully. When I'm tired, frustrated or stressed out (which is most of the time), I'm most likely to duck into the back kitchen when I see him coming; or treat him to surly one-word answers if he does manage to buttonhole me. And, to his credit, he has tolerated (and to some extent, been chastened by) my treatment of him. The result of all this being that we don't like each other, but we really do. Or something.

Since I gave him the news that we would not be renewing our lease, our relationship has actually improved; partly because the decision has relieved me of a lot of the stress, frustration and exhaustion that has made me such a harpy. So, the other day, he was sitting in the café enjoying his cup of milked-down Earl Grey tea while I was trying to close the place, and he pointed this out to me—the part about me not being such a harpy anymore (though not in those exact words…)

I thought about this for a bit, then replied, "You know, that's partly because now I don't have to deal with (the husband's) uncertain commitment to the place. Now I just know he's not interested in doing it, and I can't do it by myself." Probably sharing a bit more than I needed to about my feelings of having been let down by my business/life partner.

"Yeah…I've seen (husband) around the place. And it's obvious the way he walks that he's in a lot of pain…"

Duh.

Of course he's in a lot of pain. In fact, there are times he can hardly walk. He wears a brace on one leg to try to compensate for 54 years of trying to function with the flattest feet known to man. Between that and the scary blood clot incident a couple of years ago, and his eye problems, and the fact that the stress, irregular hours and bad eating habits that are part and parcel of our business venture have caused him to gain back a fair portion of the sixty pounds he lost before we bought the restaurant… He is simply not equal to the physical demands of running this restaurant.

Me? I'm not exactly a prime physical specimen, either…in fact, I'm direly out of shape, and in pain most of the time from tweaking some part or other of my half-century-old body scaling the equipment to get at the upper level storage or hauling a fifty-pound box of potatoes into the kitchen or some damn thing that I have no business doing at my age. But there's a certain amount of I've been doing this kind of thing all my working life and I'm just used to it. Whereas, for the past sixteen years, the husband has been making his living widening his butt with the seat of a desk chair. If I'm marginally up to the twelve-hours-on-your-feet-without-a-break aspect of owning a restaurant, the husband is utterly…not. And it took Mr. Landlord's casual observation to smack me upside the head with this fact.

So I have him to thank that another layer of resentment and ill-feeling about the less-than-ideal outcome of our business venture has been lifted from my shoulders. The Universe sends help from the most unlikely sources, does it not?

Success As The Absence of Failure

Recently, my days at the café have become a series of "Lasts…"

On Thursday, we toasted The Last Thanksgiving at the Hot Flash Café.

We've decorated The Last Christmas Tree(s).

And I'm beginning to think about The Last Christmas Party.

In the months ahead, there will be The Last Valentine's Day Dinner; The Last Easter, Mother's Day and Father's Day Brunches. No, wait. No Father's Day. We'll be closed by then. Whew.

I look ahead to these things, not sure whether to dab at my misty eyes, or rub my hands together in anticipation. So conflicted. Guiltily happy; frustratingly maudlin. Shoot me now.

But it got me thinking, today, about success, and failure. What they are. Whether they are. Do success and failure even exist, in the context of personal busyness?

Not "business." Busy-ness. The things we do keep ourselves busy. Occupied. Off the streets and out of trouble. Alive and vital. Interested and in touch. Is success measured only by accomplishment, or in simply doing?

Because it's certainly true that we enjoyed a measure of success with the café. During these challenging economic times, our doors have remained open. We are solvent. Going on five years now. That's about as much as one can ask for, these days. But…it doesn't feel like success, really. Not as I imagine the world defines "success."

But, for me, perhaps the success was just in the doing. Coming as I do from a family of devoted non-risk-takers, the kind of people who get a job and stay with it for as long as it will have them, or as long as they can stand it, 'til death or retirement do they part… It feels like a tremendous victory to have stepped out and actually DONE the thing I thought I wanted most in the world.

That it turned out NOT to be the ultimate solution to my life, NOT my highest and greatest destiny, NOT the thing that completed me…doesn't seem to matter.

Because I would never have known that if I hadn't tried. I would always feel as if I had been short-changed by life, or as if I had short-changed life, if I had not at least given it a go.

Am I disappointed, disillusioned, distressed and exhausted as hell?

Yes.

But I am NOT a failure.

I am left with that. That tiny leg up…to my next adventure.

The Season of Letting Go

So...

We cracked open a bottle of fourteen-year-old Dom Perignon (a years-ago gift that I found when I was cleaning out my pantry on Wednesday)

and drank a toast

to the last Thanksgiving at the Hot Flash Cafe.

Peace?

Peace? Have I made peace with the coming major change in my life? It seems as if I have…at least for now. I don't quite know where the peace is coming from. But I won't chase it away…

I have a feeling that it partly comes from knowing that there will be an end to this. A stopping point. A point at which I can sit down, wipe my brow and declare, "Done!" For the past four years, I have not had the luxury of even considering that option.

When you run a business—a business that you have no business running by yourself—you are NEVER done. There is never a time when you can sit back, look at it and say, "I DID it." There is never a sense of achievement. You hardly have enough time to pat one accomplishment into place before turning to confront the Pile of UN-done things that you never seem to be able to get to. Pick one and start hammering away at it. Accomplish it, or not, depending on how many other fires you have to put out in the process. Meanwhile, ten other things have been added to the Pile.

I'm sure there are people out there who can live this way. Maybe there are even people who thrive under the pressure. There was a time when I thought I was one of those. 
And, truthfully, if I had only had to face that kind of life for one or maybe two years—kinda what I thought it would be when we went into it—I might have made it. 

But it just went on too long. Too many years of not being able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Too many years of juggling…always with one or two things popping out of the pile I was trying to juggle and clattering away across the stage. And no lovely assistant to at least pick them up for me and chuck them back.

So now I can at least say, "In six months, I'll be DONE."

I'm finding it's a marvelous thing to look forward to.

Progress

Today, we broke the news to our landlord that we would not be renewing our lease. 
That's as official as it gets, I guess. And when he asked why, it was a lot easier to answer than I thought it would be.

"Basically, I cannot do this by myself anymore."

I'm surprised at how eagerly I have embraced this…this dissolution of the thing I thought I wanted more than anything else in the world. Mr. Landlord started making noises to the effect of giving us a month-to-month lease if we haven't sold the business by the time the lease is up.

"Absolutely not," I shot back, almost before the words had finished leaving his lips. "As of June 30, I'm done. Period. I'd be done as of today if I could."

We spoke to an agent last night…who basically told us we'd be lucky if we could GIVE away a business in this economic climate. Oddly enough, that didn't bother me. I knew there was a strong possibility that we would end up locking the doors and liquidating rather than turning the keys over to a new owner. In some ways, that is a far more attractive option to me than having to possibly train my replacement. For many reasons—some emotional, some practical—it will be a lot easier to just brush the dust from my hands and ride off into the sunset.

So, yeah…I'm counting the days. In fact, I realized today that it may be a much shorter time than I thought. I was thinking in terms of June 30—the day our lease is up—being my last day of work. Then I realized we will probably be closing the doors more like May 31—since we will only be responsible for paying June's rent, and that money comes out of May's proceeds.

Six months, then. Six months and twenty days, to be precise.

Yeah. I'm all over that.