“You’re living my dream!”

Really?

Don’t get me wrong.  I like what I do just fine.  But there is a gap between having The Dream and getting up early seven days a week to make fresh bread in a foreign country.  I think, when people have The Dream, and when The Dream involves a bed and breakfast, they often imagine the aesthetics.  The rooms.  The curtains and the linens. What kind of beds will it have?  Will there be a veranda?  Will it be continental breakfast, full English or a cultural mix?  The Dream will ask you to imagine where the cars will be parked, what kind of wine to serve at cocktail hour, if there will be a sitting room.  Walnut or Pine?  Traditional or contemporary or eclectic?  Tubs or showers?

What is the color palate going to be?  What color, indeed.

Innkeeping is like regular household management on crack. Everything can go wrong. It doesn’t matter if the breakfast is continental or full English.  The kitchen’s going to look like a cyclone hit it either way.  And those tubs?  Showers?  You haven’t lived until you have unclogged a drain full of other people’s hair with your bare hand (well, you could go get a glove, but that would mean climbing the stairs again.  And you’ve done that.  Six times already). If your version of The Dream includes an old house, well, don’t smile benignly at that crack in the plaster.  It might end up on your German guest’s head in the middle of the night.  At some point, your puppy might go into one of the guest rooms and remove the panties of one of your clients’ suitcases and run around the pool with them.  That same puppy might even do a happy tinkle on some luggage.  It’s been known to happen.  And you can pray for the occasional guest who likes cold showers – because at some point, the hot water heater is going to blow. It’s probably going to be at 8 in the morning on check out day just before those slightly irritated guests who didn’t get the Suite they wanted are formulating their Trip Advisor reviews in their minds.

So you get the kitchen wiped up, the floor vacuumed and mopped, the windows done.  You’ve assured that the pool won’t turn anyone’s skin green with either acidity or alkalinity or one too many cupfuls of chlorine.  The six loads of sheets are washed and hung, the towels are in the dryer (making you feel guilty about the electricity but you only have seven laundry lines and hell, you are only one person).  The bathroom drains are unclogged, the girl that helps you has changed over the rooms, your husband is at the five different stores he needs to go to in order for you to get the snacks out for the arriving guests in the afternoon, not to mention the breakfasts for the next two mornings. You’ve checked out the guests and their credit cards all worked.  Now it’s the wait for the next groups coming in.

So you decide to look in the mirror, which summarily cracks.  Your fourteen hour day is less than half over. Your hair is in a squishy on the top of your head, you look mad (not the angry kind).  The lack of makeup combined with Eau de Cheese Omelette perfume is making you feel, well, just plain nasty.  You dive furiously into the shower, hoping that no one else is showering at the same time, lest you hog all the hot water.  Makeup is applied immediately thereafter, as you try to erase the memory of how you looked five minutes ago.  You sit on the sofa, your hair still wrapped in a towel, while attempting cream your legs, which you forgot to shave.

You hear the sound of a car.  Your new guests have arrived.  Unwrap hair towel, brush madly, stick it all back up in a squishy, check quickly in fragment of the broken mirror, and pray you’ve brushed your teeth before walking outside with a big smile as they announce, upon exiting the car, that you’re living The Dream!  

It’s a compliment, of course, The Dream thing. Because it means that from the first moment, the guests feel comfortable.  Like things are right.  I cannot tell you how many times things have gone wrong here and the guest reacted in such a way that I felt bathed in kindness and love.  Our guests see how hard we try and that makes the sheer enormity of the task very doable.

This is where mindful inn-keeping comes in.

Caution: Mindful innkeeping is not possible between the hours of 6 am and 3 pm.  Only mad, insane, bordering-on-complete-chaos is achievable between those hours.  Mindful innkeeping starts after the guests have checked in, understand how the remotes for the gate, the TV and the satellite dishes work, have been served some salami and cheese and a glass of wine and are sitting on the veranda.

It is for this moment that The Dream lives. The moment when the innkeepers savor a few moments with their guests, who are adrift taking in their surroundings high upon a hilltop in the wine country of Italy.  It’s when the perceptive guest realizes that the simplicity of the goat cheese and the grissini and the graceful curve of the wine glass beguile the Stravinsky-like symphony of tasks, one layered upon the next, that it took to create this most perfect moment of peace and serenity.  

It’s when we all, innkeepers and guests, look at the distant mountains and sign and smile and talk about life. It’s before a jetlag-busting night’s sleep in real linen and goose down bedding, and the morning light that brings the symphony to life once again.  In those few precious moments, it’s appreciation that abounds.  From the guest to the innkeeper.  From the innkeeper to the guest.

And there, right there, is mindful innkeeping at its finest.  And that’s when I can say to myself that I am living The Dream.