It was an ordinary October afternoon, except that my college-age son had come home from class completely depleted.
He's a brain tumor survivor of nearly 20 years. Very capable, but the physical demands of a heavy backpack, back-to-back classes, and the challenges left from his tumor and treatment left him frustrated and stressed. It's the kind of thing you never quite get used to, watching your kid work twice as hard as everyone around him just to get through an ordinary day.
We had been splitting our time between Seattle and Ellensburg, the small eastern Washington town where I grew up and where he went to school. Being nearby felt right because our son needed some extra supports. Chris and I had also been quietly turning the question over for ourselves: Where did we want to land in retirement? Ellensburg is a wonderful place, and for a moment it felt like a real possibility. But the more we thought about it, the more the healthcare question kept coming up. For a cancer survivor, proximity to world-class medical care is so important. That afternoon, watching my son come home depleted, the answer became a little clearer: couldn't he finish his degree online? Couldn't we all just come home to Seattle?
Caught somewhere between worry and the need to want to fix the situation for my son, I did what I sometimes do when I need to escape my own thoughts for a moment. I opened one of my favorite websites: Inns for Sale in Washington State.
And there it was. Greenlake Guest House. For sale. She was a beauty!
My love of bed and breakfasts goes back a long way. I was 27 the first time I stayed in one, a place called Barro Station in St. Helena, California, where my sister was getting married. I was completely enchanted. The idea that someone would invite strangers into their home, let them see the bookshelves and the family photos and the enormous wine rack, and send them off each morning with fresh coffee and a real breakfast. It struck me as one of the most generous and interesting ways a person could spend their days. I even spotted the innkeeper downtown one afternoon, picking up a few things, cheerfully greeting everyone she passed. She seemed like someone who had figured something out.
I never forgot that feeling. Over the years, my husband Chris and I stayed at B&Bs, and what I loved most was that each one had its own distinct personality. You weren't just booking a room, you were stepping briefly into someone else's life.
Chris and I had talked about owning an inn before. We'd even looked seriously at a small property in Walla Walla five or six years earlier. But Walla Walla had the same healthcare limitations as Ellensburg, and with both of us in our mid-fifties, retirement still felt like something on the other side of a hill we hadn't quite reached. We put it on the back burner.
Back to that October afternoon.
I called Chris the moment I saw the listing. I honestly wasn't sure he'd go for it because the timing felt sudden, the idea enormous. But he didn't hesitate. We talked it through, and the more we did, the more it made sense. It would give us something meaningful to grow into in retirement. It would feed the creative side of me that had been quietly waiting for exactly this kind of project. And critically, it was in Seattle, a city with the world-class healthcare our son needed, right across the street from the lake we've always loved. Even our daughter, Mason, in the thick of her first year of law school, gave us her blessing. From a future lawyer we decided to take it as a binding agreement!
There was one more thing. Our son could work here someday, if he wanted. It could be a place where the work suits him and the pace is his own.
I reached out to Julie and Blayne, the owners who were selling. I half-expected them to take one look at my complete lack of innkeeping experience and move on. Instead, we had a wonderful conversation. Then another. Then many more.
And now here we are. We moved in at the end of March, took a couple of weeks to find our footing as a family, and have been putting the pieces in place ever since. There's been so much to learn and we've loved almost every minute of it. We are now accepting reservations and will begin welcoming guests at the end of May.
Check back soon for more dispatches from a newly minted innkeeper. There's plenty more to tell.