From  Feng  Shui  Expert  to Innkeeper
Would You Like More Coffee?
by Sheryll Hirschberger Reichwein

"Success is going straight—around the circle."
Chinese Proverb, as quoted in Zen and the Art of Management

ON A GOOD MORNING, twenty-five cents a person was what I earned serving breakfast at The Pancake Man, a restaurant that used to be on Route 132 in Hyannis. It was 1974 and I had just graduated from Barnstable High School. My father knew the owner and got me the job to earn spending money for college. He said the girls there made “Good Money.”
   Twenty-five cents a person. Do you know how many cups of coffee I had to pour, how many buttermilk pancakes I had to serve, how many slices of toast I had to burn to make that “good money?” My entire body still aches at the memory.
   Fast forward to 2008. This morning I poured lots of coffee, flipped lots of pancakes, and tried to remember not to burn the toast. I’m an innkeeper. And while I love our sweet corner of West Falmouth, with our ten guest rooms and twelve-and-a-half baths, I have to admit that I find it more than a little bit odd when guests rave about my breakfasts.
   “Have you always wanted to be a cook?” they often ask.
I smile. “Not in a million years,” I think to myself.
   Since the last publication of Cape Women, in 2003, my life has radically changed. In the fall of 2003, The Feng Shui Deck: 50 Ways to Create a Healthy and Harmonious Home, which I co-authored with Olivia Miller, was published by Chronicle Books.
   Shortly thereafter, I moved to Nantucket to live with my fiancé, Douglas. I tried to continue teaching communications at Cape Cod Community College, something I’d been doing since 1989, but the unpredictable commute from Nantucket wore me down.
   For a time, I was an unemployed bride-to-be with lots of time to plan table settings and seating arrangements for my wedding in the fall of 2004. After the honeymoon, I took a job running a small folk art museum with big bureaucratic intrigue. Life on the Faraway Island was stressful in ways that I could never have anticipated, but I hung in there until 2006 when we bought The Beach Rose Inn in Falmouth, and I became an innkeeper.
   “Have you always wanted to own an inn?” is another question our guests often ask.
   Again, I smile. I smile a lot at The Beach Rose Inn. I’m happily married to a wonderful man. He is also my business partner and is incredibly talented in many ways that I am not. He can fix a plugged toilet on the spot, build a patio, create a waterfall, redesign a front entry, and much more.
   So I easily smile and tell our guests, “No, I haven’t always wanted to own an inn. I couldn’t imagine owning an inn without Douglas. He makes everything possible.”
   It’s a truthful answer—but not the whole answer. The whole answer goes something like this, “I never thought about owning an inn because I was busy planning to become a world famous teacher, author and Feng Shui expert. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”
   Ouch. An ego craving attention can be terribly unattractive. Wisely, I keep the whole answer to myself. And pour more coffee.
When I was eighteen, and serving breakfast for twenty-five cents a head, I thought life moved in a straight line. I would go to college, pursue a career and achieve great things. My resume, like my life, would make logical, linear sense.
   Today, soon-to-be 52, I know differently. Life moves in a circular motion, full of beginnings, middles, and endings – leading to new beginnings. My life experience has shown me these circles. And my study of Eastern philosophy has confirmed them. Feng Shui is grounded in the Five Element Cycle, each element giving birth to the next in an endless, dynamic circle. Time and again I have witnessed the profound, reliable wisdom of the Five Elements in my life and the lives of my clients.
   And yet, a stubborn part of me still expects life to unfold in a straight line. Like a high school algebraic equation, I want it all to add up in equal balance. I want to account for every x factor and define every y and z.
   I want to quantify my existence to prove my worth.
   And, when it doesn’t all add up, I feel like something is lost. If I’m an innkeeper, then I’m no longer a teacher, writer, or healer. I’ve lost those parts of me the way an inn guest loses a jacket or a shoe, absentmindedly left behind under the bed or in a closet. Parts of me are strewn in another place and time.
   Yet I know that if I could magically rearrange my professional life so that it would add up in some linear, logical fashion, I would still not achieve what I desire— proof of worthiness. A wounded ego is never satisfied. The seduction of the perfect resume is a trick that keeps me striving to become. When, in truth, I already am the sum total of all of my experiences—past, present, and future.
    I do know that all of me is here, in this now. I understand that life is really more like quantum physics than theoretical algebra. Well, almost all of me knows this—all of me except that young woman who worked her butt off for pennies and dreamed of being someone more. She’s still alive inside of me. We serve coffee together every morning. And some days, when she feels like nothing has changed, I have to remind her. Today, the coffee is fresh roasted organic. The pancakes are gourmet apple oat. The toast never burns. The guests are always pleasant and appreciative.
    And we make a lot more than twenty-five cents a head.

A native Cape Codder, Sheryll Hirschberger Reichwein has been an innkeeper since the fall of 2006, when she and her husband Douglas purchased The Beach Rose Inn in West Falmouth. Prior to that, Sheryll was an Adjunct Professor of Communications at Cape Cod Community College. She is a certified Feng Shui consultant and a widely published writer whose work was often featured in Cape Women magazine. 
www.theBeachRoseInn.com