My Million-Dollar Donkey

by East, Ginny;

  “You’re going to move to Georgia?” she eventually said. “And leave me here in Orlando? That means I won’t be able to come home on weekends.”

  “You can’t really care that we are selling the studio now that you’ve graduated and left. You never come home on weekends anyway. And you can still visit as much as you want, but you’ll be coming to Georgia, which will feel like a wonderful vacation.”

  “That studio was my life! Even if I don’t live at home, I want to know I can visit. Kent must be devastated. Everyone must be devastated.”

  “Everyone will get over it,” Mark said. “Um... You might try to be happy for us. This is a dream come true for your mother and me.”

  “Since when? Mom, do you really want to do this?”

  “It was her idea,” Mark said, rolling his eyes as if Denver’s question was silly.

  My gaze shifted to the floor. True, I was ready for change, but perhaps we should consider taking occasional vacations rather than undertake a huge life overhaul. The idea of setting off on an adventure with the family was beyond exciting in theory, but actually walking away from our livelihood while we still had kids to raise and educate was scary as hell.

  “I love the studio, as you know, but I’ve always wanted to be a mom more than a dancer or a business owner. Working as much as I do has been an unfortunate necessity, something I did because I had to make money to help care for the family. The idea that I can lay down the burden is pretty amazing. And I have to admit, I’d appreciate more time for writing. Yesterday I was accepted to one of the low residency MFA programs I applied to, as if everything happening is meant to be. So yes, honey, I really want to do this.”

  She hung up, but not before making a few tongue-in-cheek comments that left me feeling judged and somewhat guilty for daring to follow my own aspirations rather than to continue a life of servitude and sacrifice for my children. Am I making this choice for me, or for them? I started to wonder. Just what are we running to, or away from, really?

  As respected business owners, we were icons in the community and treated as local heroes. My children enjoyed a small level of notoriety themselves as members of the renowned dance family. Mark and I had worked with over six thousand families over the years. True, we were busy parents due to the demands of running a business, but my kids weren’t latchkey kids nor did they spend after school hours in childcare with strangers. I took them to school each day, picked them up, and stopped for a snack as we headed back to the studio.

  Each season I planned my teaching schedule around my children’s interests. No matter how busy I was, I carved out the time to be a Girl Scout leader or classroom helper. I did everyone’s laundry and the dishes so no one other than me would feel burdened with mundane chores. I cleaned their rooms and left little gifts of a favored magazine or treat on their pillows. I took the kids to music lessons, camps, and parties, and liberally hired substitute teachers anytime my children had an open house or school event. And when I couldn’t be there, parents of students would take my kids under their wing, offering rides, snacks, gifts, and praise. If it takes a village to raise a child, I certainly had a dance village to help me do the job. My children had it pretty good.

  In fact, the more I thought about our life, I could see our kids probably spent more quality time with their parents than most every other kid we knew, the ones who had full time mothers at home and a father who went to work in an office each day. My kids didn’t have a dad who spent Sundays golfing, or a Mom who spent each evening grading papers or working long shifts as a nurse or real estate agent. Instead they had parents who were always nearby and accessible; parents who were deeply involved in their lives. We even had great relationships with their friends since we taught them all dance too.

  Mark and I took our children to Disney, bought tickets to concerts or shows, organized family art projects for fun, and spent numerous days at the mall buying clothes or school supplies. We made a huge deal out of holidays with the planning, cooking, decorating, and entertaining a significant family affair garnished with laughter and poignant family traditions. We were connected to extended family too, spending time with both sets of grandparents. Mark’s sister was a significant presence in daily activities. She worked for us by day, and spent weekends joining us at movies or just hanging out at home. I never made plans for the family that didn’t include her, always paying the cost of the ticket or the experience for her so nothing would stand in the way of her joining us.

  Life had been satisfactory for everyone except Mark and me. Our customers adored us and appreciated the quality of our school. Our employees enjoyed good, steady jobs doing the work they enjoyed. Our kids felt safe and loved and their needs were provided for. Our families were involved in our lives. We had pre-paid college plans, a car for each member of the family who drove, and we made enough to take humble vacations now and again.

  The problem was, as parents and owners, we were burned out, tired, and our marriage was stressed to the point of breaking. Selfishly, we wanted to change things to put our dreams and wishes at the forefront of choices, because deep down, we believed everyone’s life was easier than ours. Everyone’s. And we were envious.

  “Maybe what we need to do is to realign our priorities, not change our lives completely,” I said, feeling guilty about everyone’s hysterical disappointment regarding our decision.

  “Realigning my priorities is why I’m ready for a new life,” Mark said.

  “We could stop micro-managing and travel as we always said we someday would. Maybe we should buy a different house, a bigger one; with a workshop so you can make art in your free time. We can buy a boat and spend some weekends involved in recreation that isn’t dance related. God, I’d love that. I’ll get my master’s degree and write something noteworthy. You can go to school to study interior design. You’ve always said you wanted to have a career in design.”

  I was straying from our initial enthusiasm and he wasn’t pleased, but I kept on. “I’m thinking we may be premature to retire while we still have a family to raise. Not like we can run off to Europe or live in the wilderness and do whatever we want while we still have kids who must attend school.”

  “The kids deserve a better life and they won’t get one here,” Mark said. “I hate Florida. It’s too hot and flat and there’s nothing here but malls and restaurants. Mostly, I hate the studio. I hate the people. I hate the dance profession.” Mark said. “And my body can’t take this work anymore. You know how bad my hips are.”

  Mark had been diagnosed with arthritis and his hips had caused him discomfort for years. Despite my frequent suggestions that he get hip replacements so we could both live a full and more active life, he refused. He didn’t believe in formal medicine, or so he said, and frankly, he wasn’t all that bothered that his physical limitations were the death knell to my yearning for active recreation.

  “If nothing else, you have to be proud of all we’ve accomplished over the years. We’ve created a fantastic school. We’ve trained great dancers and built an amazing facility. We’ve changed young people’s lives and contributed a great deal to our community.”

  He pulled away from me, the distance a reminder that if I didn’t give him what he wanted, I’d be treated to a painful dose of alienation, Mark’s usual weapon of choice. “Dance was never my thing the way it has been yours. I just went along for the ride, because I wanted to marry you.”

  In the beginning, Mark had been obsessed with dance, so his comment now felt like nothing but an excuse to get what he wanted. I knew he wasn’t happy. Mark was the kind of man who would quickly propose romantic and exciting ideas, regardless of the fact that they were totally impractical for a couple with kids and loans nailing their feet to the floor. I took on the role of the responsible one, always working ceaselessly hard - not because I was ambitious, but to alleviate his need to shoulder the full burden of raising a family. From the beginning, I al
ways wanted to give him everything he ever wanted; I just wasn’t in a position to do so, and being made to feel guilty for his lot in life now stung.

  What Mark had wanted all along was freedom from work and responsibilities. And who could blame him? After years of focusing on his happiness, my children’s needs, and the burden of keeping life all together to protect my parents’ investment in our business, I was more than ready to enjoy some freedom and self-indulgence myself.

  The problem was everything just seemed to be happening so fast and my practical side couldn’t resist mulling over “what if.”

  Mark and I had a history of taking risks that paid off. But we also had a history of poor financial management which unraveled our success more often than not. We were great at making excuses and justifications to explain our folly, and logic led me to believe we might be doing that again. We liked telling ourselves that our innovation and talent had manifested our financial stability, but we both knew deep down that talent was only half the equation.

  Considering all this, I felt honor bound to voice a few important considerations. “What if we lose it all? I’ve never done anything but teach dance, and I’m so tired, Mark. I just can’t start over and do all this again at my age. I’d love freedom and retirement as much as anyone. But if I’m ever going to be expected to work to support the family again, we have to keep this school.”

  Mark smiled in his endearing way. “Do you know how much money we will have when we sell the business and the buildings, too? Three million dollars. It’s impossible even for me to lose that much money. And even if I did, I would take care of you. For the last 15 years you’ve been the driving force of our finances and our life. You started working years before I ever got my first job. I promise I’ll take care of you and the kids whatever happens.”

  All my life I had wondered how those women married to men who took responsibility for their wife and kids felt. The promise that Mark would assume that role was exactly what I needed to feel safe, loved, and cared for in a legitimate way. But though he was voicing the words I longed to hear, I had some doubts.

  “I’m not the only one of us who has only taught dance for a living. How would you take care of us if we ever needed income?”

  “How hard could paying for the basics be? We’ll have a house paid off. No debt. Worst case scenario is I’ll have to earn enough for our food. I could do that as a window washer. Trust me. We’ll be fine.”

  He looked so earnest. So hopeful. So filled with conviction.

  “I’m deathly tired of your dad having a say in how we live.” He added. “He treats me as if I’m that same kid who drove us off the financial cliff years ago. I need and deserve to have control of my own life, my own decisions, my own family, and my own money. I’m not the young kid I was when we first got married. I’ve learned so much by working with your father all these years.”

  Mark was 39 years old. Didn’t every man deserve independence by that grown-up age? My handsome, charismatic husband was talented, unhappy, and begging me to let him off the leash. I prided myself on being a woman who loved and supported her husband in every way. For years I had devoted the lion’s share of our expendable resources to his ever-evolving interests. Now, we could invest in his dreams, however romanticized they might be, without the financial fallout being my problem to solve.

  “Okay. Let’s move to Georgia,” I said.

  Putting voice to the words felt empowering—a validation that all the work and frustration and sacrifice we’d made for years had been part of a grander scheme, bringing us to this opportunity, this moment, this chance to live a free, creative life.

  The next day the Smiths notified us that they wanted to waive the due diligence period. They didn’t want us to participate in any transitional period and would prefer if we would leave immediately. We signed the papers and, overnight, we had a million dollars in the bank and total freedom.

  What did we do? Well, I didn’t rush out and buy expensive clothes. My husband didn’t zip out to buy us tickets for a whirlwind Paris vacation, and we certainly didn’t purchase a red or blue Porsche. Mark left me in Florida to pack up the house and handle our affairs while he headed off to Georgia to begin remodeling our little vacation cabin so we’d have a place to live in. His giddy delight spilled from him by way of animated speech, bright smile, and happy eyes.

  I was happy because he was happy.

  Within the week, Mark spied a “For Sale by Owner” sign on 50 acres of beautiful, undeveloped land, primarily forest, with about eight acres of pastureland. Instantly, that surreal million dollars parked in our bank account caused an itch in his pocket you could liken to poison oak on his butt. He wanted that property. Bad.

  He drove all night on an adrenaline high to get back to Florida. “You’re going to flip when I tell you what I’ve found.” He sat on the bed to share his new, brilliant life plan which involved our buying this huge tract of land with most of our cash on hand. He would build a cabin each year for us to sell. When he was done building to his heart’s content, we could sell the final home (ours), and we would have made so much money we could move to Italy or someplace equally exotic for our next adventure. We’d be rich(er), thanks to him.

  “Fifty acres?” I asked in disbelief. “We agreed we wanted a simple cabin on a mountainside, like the ones we’ve been renting for years. We said we were going to live a smaller life, not a larger one. You gripe every week about mowing the half acre of suburban lawn we have title to now. What will we do with fifty acres? And why are you suddenly talking about a construction business? I thought we were going to spend some time relaxing and enjoying time with the family. You don’t know anything about the construction business.”

  “We will still live a simple life, only now we’ll be putting that little cabin on 50 acres,” he said. “No more nosy neighbors, no more customers infringing on our private life. No more people. Just us.”

  “You want us to become hermits?”

  “I’ll build us a simple log cabin out of the very trees gracing the property,” he said, his eyes as bright as a child on Christmas morning. “Thoreau did it.”

  Seventeen years of marriage can make a man a master of pushing a woman’s “romantic ideal” button. He well knew I was enthralled with writers, primarily the transcendentalists, and my deepest dream was to emulate them.

  “We can stay in our vacation cabin in the interim and have an adventure. I’ve been promising you a trip for our twentieth wedding anniversary. If you let me do this, I’ll take you anywhere in the world you want to go. Anywhere.”

  The promise that the two of us would take the romantic trip that I’d been pining for forever, and live like my hero Thoreau, meant I certainly wasn’t going to refuse him anything he wanted in the bargain. Residing in a rural area would be a huge shift for people like us, but living where the closest Starbucks was over an hour away and a trip to the mall practically demands you pack an overnight bag was bound to realign our focus to the things that matter most.

  So we made the decision. The Hendrys would leave consumerism and the American middle class obsession with accumulating wealth behind. We would walk away from security and abundance in the spirit of realigned values. We had no clue what in God’s name we’d do to support ourselves if this adventure proved to be folly, but despite our reservations, we felt a pull to that 50 acres and the idea that our family story could unfold in a new way. If our life had been a piece of origami, the time had come to create a new animal from the same flimsy piece of paper.

  So, we started spending the cash that represented our lifetime of hard work and sacrifice, fueled by the idea that we weren’t spending our nest egg irresponsibly—just investing in a different sort of future.

  Mark absolutely loved remodeling, decorating, and interior design in any form, and for the first time ever, he had money to burn at Home Depot and Lowe’s. He began buying tools, wood, and fix
tures.

  Me? Still vibrating from the echo of that one encounter long ago with a beast of nature that somehow tapped into my deepest longings, I embraced the concept of country living and as soon as I had the chance, I bought a donkey.

  The donkey was two hundred and fifty dollars. A new halter to make him look dapper was eleven. The land we purchased to house my midlife crisis pet and to appease Mark’s latest fascination for building cost half a million, leaving us with enough cash to build a reasonable cabin home and take a sabbatical from a traditional job long enough to reinvent our lives. Meanwhile, we still owned the buildings that housed our business, and when the new owners of our school eventually bought them, we could sock the cash away to provide income for life.

  With such ample resources and a common agenda to embrace the simple life, what could go wrong?

  “This spending of the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet. He should have gone up garret at once.”

  —Henry David Thoreau

  ONE TWO-STEP FORWARD

  The Smiths didn’t simply forego our offer to help them learn about the dance business; they ostracized us and made us feel unwelcome to give advice or in any way be involved with the transition. Customers called us to complain, begging us to intervene, furious that we had sold the school to people who were now making drastic, unnecessary changes. Our staff turned on us too as if we’d selfishly and purposefully left them in inept hands. We made numerous attempts to help, but our words and actions were twisted to make us out the enemy. On the day we were physically thrown out of the building by our former, dearest employee, we had no choice but to accept that we were powerless to affect what was happening.