From The Innkeepers
January 2025
The Year that Was 2025-A New Year’s Reflection
Ryan, Erin, and Aaron breathe a sigh of satisfaction at the end of their first six months of being the new caretakers of the Inn at the Rustic Gate. All of the groups that came to stay in the latter half of 2025 were happy with their service and were grateful that the Inn was going to continue to be a place where they still felt very much at home.
Erin successfully finishes her 25th year of service as a teacher in the West Bloomfield Schools, breathes a sigh of both satisfaction and relief at a job well done. Both a smile comes across her face and a tear forms in her eyes as she closes her classroom door for the final time.
Aaron walks out of the Ann Arbor Whole Foods for the last time, knowing that he was there past his expiration date, and has just been waiting for this moment. What had been fulfilling as his life’s work had become more like drudgery since Amazon took over their company. He smiles that now he can have the opportunity to create something of his own and be appreciated for his efforts and his talents.
Ryan eagerly awaits the arrival of his two new partners. He has been bearing the brunt of the “heavy lifting” for almost two years now and is happy to have younger, more energetic, and more capable partners.
Sophie has finished the first semester of her Junior year at MSU and is studying landscape architecture. She really loves the program, is challenged by it, and is glad that she transferred there. We are glad for her.
Marcia, Pat, and Sharon pack up the last of their boxes and watch the movers take them away. More than one Kleenex is necessary to live through this moment.
Sharon gets up early every morning for a swim in the pool at Breton Woods in Grand Rapids, and is happier and more relaxed, and healthier than she has been for the last several years since her accident and the confluence of maladies that we all hope are behind her.
Marcia has a NuStep elliptical at her disposal at the fitness center, but uses it mostly during cold or rainy weather, because in the summer she has learned to play pickle ball and is riding around on her electric bike clocking in more miles than she thought possible.
Pat is enjoying not having the responsibility of maintaining 8 bedrooms and 9 bathrooms plus an innkeeper’s apartment. She frequently visits the Kent District Library which is located down the street from us. When asked what she is doing in her retirement she says “Pretty much what I darn well please.”
Marcia, Pat, and Sharon come to the Inn as guests to share a meal with the many friends they made while living there. The Sisters in Stitches, SABLE, the Gate Crashers, Crazy Eights, and other groups welcome them back, so they can continue to be part of each other’s lives.
Once Marcia, Pat, and Sharon have settled into the new phase and location of their retirement years, they peruse travel brochures and try to decide whether to take one major trip per year or several smaller ones around parts of the United States that they have never had an opportunity to visit.
Marcia doesn’t miss gardening at the Inn, because she has a small plot where they live, plus she maintains the plantings on the outside of their condo. However periodically she offers to come and pull weeds around the Inn, or clean up some pine needles in the labyrinth. Both are relentless and thankless chores and hard to fit in when your first priority is taking care of the guests.
Thus 2025 was a year of a series of endings and beginnings. To make a beginning sometimes you have to take risks, which are often very scary. However, this is the way we move forward through our lives. Risk taking can sometimes be our best friend on our life’s journey. If we closed ourselves off to everything that was different or new, we would never grow or develop. As I look back on the giant risk we took to uproot our lives, to retire early from our careers in order to build the Inn and move to Big Rapids to become its caretakers, we have been rewarded a thousand- fold for making these leaps of faith. As I look at them, Erin, Aaron, and Ryan are taking similar risks, but I smile because of an inner knowing that for them all will be well, as it was for us.
The premise of this New Year’s reflection was a little different. I want to give a shout out to my sister Pamela who walked by my desk as I started to do the blog -she said” Why not write about “living backwards”? Imagine your year as if it has already happened. So then this blog became exactly that- an exercise in “living backwards”, for none of the events or things that were written about have come true -at least not yet. It is what I envision this New Year to hold for us. You also could engage in a similar exercise. Imagine today it is December 31st 2025. Ask yourself what it is that you want to have happened in your life in the previous 12 months. Then live to make those moments come true.
Best wishes on your New Year’s journey.
Marcia, Pat, Sharon, and Ryan
Keepers of the Rustic Gate