Saturday mornings mean a regular stop at the Angelica Main Street Gallery. The Gallery is not just another antiques shop in the picturesque town, it is the heart of Main Street. Comfy winged back chairs set up across from the checkout counter offer a welcome place to rest your bones while you sit and chat with friends, and Saturdays are the day when everyone seems to pop in to say hello. Before I head over, I usually make myself a big cup of tea in my travel mug (which I will most likely forget about when I am there and leave somewhere in the shop), because I know I will probably be there for an hour or two catching up on the latest news in the lives of my friends. It’s also my time to regroup, to sit and do absolutely nothing but enjoy the company. I don’t do that very often, so my Saturday mornings at the Gallery have become almost sacred to me.
A group of us gather, coming and going, all while the shop is open to many visitors in search of treasures to bring home with them. Our little group often spends half of our time chatting with the shoppers, listening to tales of how they are spending their day traveling, visiting the local sites and telling us about where they are from. As they walk out the door, they are sent on their way with many blessings to have a wonderful weekend from our motley little crew, but one stands out to me more than the others. Mr. K, the former owner of the Renwick House, always sends people off by telling them “Enjoy your journey.”
Now the first time I heard him utter this saying, I thought it was said because these people were on a journey all over the Southern Tier, enjoying some time together just driving around. It wasn’t until I heard him say it a few times that I truly understood how much more it actually meant. It wasn’t just about a specific “journey”. It was about this journey we are all on together. The journey of life.
While I was preparing to do a video from the house for the Facebook page a couple of weeks ago, I realized that I needed a sign off saying and that Enjoy Your Journey was the perfect one! The house has been a guide for many weary travelers on their own journeys, be it a small or large one for most of its existence, and it was now taking me on my own journey. It continues to teach me about life in ways I had never even thought it could.
Yesterday, my husband and I took a ride to Warsaw, as I was on a mission to get some yarn I needed for a certain project and didn’t have any of in my 4,329 totes of yarn in my stash. I may be exaggerating slightly, but trust me, I have more yarn than Hobby Lobby and Joann Fabrics stores combined. I’ve really be trying to use what I have this year and not buy anything new just because “OOOOOOOoooooOOOOOO! It’s so PRETTY!” and not because I actually need it. However, this was yarn that I actually DID need to finish a project. I had just gotten one skein of it a few days prior, so I knew they had it there.
I cannot even begin to tell you how excited I was when I walked into Walmart with my reusable bag in hand, ready to grab a couple of skeins of the color I needed because it was the only place I could find it. I also cannot tell you how disappointed I was when I looked at the end cap display where the yarn was only a few days ago, and it was gone, a new display in its place. “They must have moved it to the yarn section” I thought to myself, but nope. The color I needed wasn’t there. I had just driven 45 minutes one way with only one purpose in mind, and now I was defeated.
My husband told me he was going to go look at the fishing supplies and I agreed to meet him there after I checked out a few other areas of the store. Still nothing. I did find some Strawberry filled Twinkies that I really didn’t need, but I grabbed anyway just to try them and because I needed SOMETHING to put in my bag that I actually remembered to bring into the store for a change. As I continued through the store, I tried to remind myself to not be upset, and to ENJOY THE DAMN JOURNEY! I tried to salvage what was a seemingly wasted trip. “Tell hubby to get his fishing license while we are here so he can get that out of the way for the upcoming season,” a little voice told me, so I did. I was off to use the restroom while he did that.
“Check the clearance section,” the little voice told me when I was headed back to meet him. Why would it be in the clearance section? It’s not like it’s discontinued. They have a whole bunch of that yarn on the shelves back there, just not the color I need. Despite my misgivings, I listened to that little voice anyway, and as I strolled down the aisle, looking at a variety of marked down items, there it was, gleaming like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow! The yarn I needed! Only one skein of it, but one is all I really needed anyway. It wasn’t a wasted trip after all. I got exactly what I set out for that day. I also got Taco Bell afterwards because I was hungry, but that was a bonus, if you can call Taco Bell a bonus. It IS the gift that keeps giving, as my belching the whole way home reminded me.
It came to me that it’s in those moments of frustration when we need to remind ourselves to enjoy our journey the most, for it is in those moments where we can change our day around. I was ready to throw my hands up in the air, call it quits and head home, but once I changed my outlook it allowed me to listen to the little voice of intuition rather than the voice of anger. The universe is always sending us signs, guiding us to what we need. We just need to listen.
If you happen to find yourself in Angelica on a Saturday morning, be sure to stop by the Gallery and say hello. If I’m not there, be on the lookout for one of my many lost travel mugs. I’ll end this by saying that I hope that no matter where your life takes you, you remember to enjoy the journey.
Renwick House 