The hospitality industry employs dreamers, creatives, vagabonds, those in the center while simultaneously on the periphery of our society. Some are educated some not; all in the service of mankind. The industry we all believed was indestructible… The hospitality industry has fallen on hard times, and I too have found myself in a different position than I’d prefer. Timing is of course impeccable; my husband and I just bought a home, our dream realized. But innovation is born out of scarcity and resilience is at the end of the rope. Most of what I have poured my heart into for the past years is currently suspended in the air and I’m holding my breath waiting for it to come back down. Writing is cathartic at the moment so a little bit of truth with my whine.
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I was 9 years old and a feeling of shame washed over me on career day. I’m embarrassed to share this but I think radical transparency is critically important to human connection and compassion so… My teacher spoke about noteworthy careers, doctor, lawyer, teacher among them. My daddy a postal worker, my mama mostly stay at home with assorted jobs in hospitality and elsewhere that would permit her to be available to my sister and I in every sense of the word. Francesca then didn’t value those noble careers to the degree she should have, social pressure and need for approval winning out over reason.
Fred and Robyn Hemsey, my mom and dad, both have a warrior work ethic. My dad to this day has 6 different streams of income. He went on to get two masters degrees, or maybe it is three, after turning 40 years old. He is a teacher now. I cut grass with him in the summertime since I was 12, the most formidable work experience of my life. Do the work, even the unglamorous work. Mama attends to everyone in our family, pseudo parents the young teachers in her school, and pours her entire life into the welfare of my sister and I, our husbands, and our cats! She prays for babies. In elementary school I wasn’t evolved enough to advocate for their heroic careers. The suggestion of white collar careers being superior committed me to a life of indentured servitude to goal-oriented perfection. To good grades, accolades, and enough extra curricular activities to get into Georgetown. My blue collar parents worked to their bones to send me there and are still laden with some loans from the pursuit. But it was their joy to do it. And it was my joy to go. Current events beg the question does school/career/status the person make or are we all just playing pretend? In the blink of an eye schools are closed, theaters shut down, we cannot spend time with a friend over coffee. Michelin starred and corner bar alike are leveled, flocks of people are out of work. Grocery workers and civil servants are rightfully elevated to hero status and the white collared are safely in their homes learning just what it’s like to be a stay at home parent.
I’m two glasses of wine in rambling but I mean this all to say, we subscribe to stories in our heads and the stories hold so much weight we are unable to see outside their influence. A 9 year old may not realize the heroism of a stay at home mom and postal worker. We won’t long for the warming smile of an elderly fixture at the diner pouring a second cup of coffee until we can’t get it. A grown woman won’t know how to feel her worth without income to match it because her whole life she sought stability and structure grounded in grades and pay. But we can change all that in this moment. Feeling my way through a new normal this evening with my feet up and no alarm set. Tomorrow’s another day; but first calling my parents to say thanks.