Be Careful What You Wish For

Once upon a time, there was a semi-talented creative who wished with all her might for a business. One where she could express her semi-talent and stop driving her husband crazy with moving furniture, painting walls and amassing the largest personal collection of seasonal pillows and fabric on the west coast.

So I set my sights on a building; not just any building, but an old theater with its original stage, windows, floors and the most glorious storefront windows. It’s been a dream of mine to own an old building, and even better than that, to remodel said structure.

I set my sights on a building original to the old part of Walnut Grove. It had been vacant for over a decade, with broken windows, an array of fowl corpses, and half the building falling off in the back.

My husband, although on board to revive a part of this town’s history, was not as excited as I was about original floors, woodwork, light fixtures to die for – and all of this could be ours if it were for sale!

I will, for the sake of my readers (and thank you for reading this), fast forward a bit. What I thought I wanted ended up not being the case, but instead everything I never knew I always wanted was only a block up the street in a peculiar little building so rich in history and so quirky it just felt right (I’m big on gut feelings and juju).

Alas, the historical Tong building. It has a colorful past, and has withstood a fire as well as all the changing of life around her.

As I embark on my stewardship of this piece of Delta history, I find myself falling in love with each discovery of chipped paint, old lighting and small doors leading nowhere. A very different vision from what I had to begin with.

Sometimes in life, the things you’re supposed to experience are there all the time. We just have to let the voices in our heads of “what we want” be silenced and wait out the ride.

The moral of my story … surrender … and most of the time the greatest gifts will be laid upon your table.

– Liz