A New Year

 

At the start of any relationship, there are love letters, there are fireworks, and birds singing.

In 2008, we celebrated our 10th anniversary by buying one another the traditional gift of  “tin”.

The reason we had to cash in our life savings and take out a half-million dollar mortgage was because the “tin” happened to be the roof of a barn that just so happened to be sitting next to a 200-year-old farmhouse and 60 acres of land.

By the end of 2008 (and the beginning of the Great Recession) we had both lost our jobs and were on the verge of losing it all.

Over the holidays that year, we made a pact that whomever found a job in the city first would take it (and hold onto it) while the other remained at the farm and tried to make a go.  Thus began the “year of sacrifice” that was captured in Season 1 of The Fabulous Beekman Boys.  It was, undoubtedly, one of the most stressful, contentious years of our lives.

In the blink of an eye, one year of sacrifice stretched into five.

As Beekman 1802 grew, we found the need to hire staff but still unable to wean ourselves from a steady city paycheck and corporate health benefits.

But were they really beneficial?

Five years apart taught us each how to fend for ourselves in different ways.  While one of us forged a path in a brave new wilderness, the other learned to re-navigate an urban one solo.

While it is true that absence makes the heart grow fonder, it also makes one accustomed to setting one’s on schedule, having the entire bed to one’s self, and never having to wait for the bathroom or the shower.

There is comfort and simplicity in solitude.

But strength in numbers.

Thanks to an “Amazing” year, we are now reunited.   We’re living at the farm and finally, since the inception of Beekman 1802, working full-time together to turn our vision and passion into a successful and sustainable business.

There will be love letters, and seedlings and picnics and fireworks and harvests and scary masks, and feasts and mistletoe and snow and icicles and…birds singing.

And I am reminded of the words of another witty writer who once was seduced by the charms of Sharon Springs, too:

If you are not too long, I will wait for you all my life—Oscar Wilde