The Itty Bitty Inn Prompts Great Big Nostalgia

We just returned home from a two-week, bucket-list trip on the West Coast and it was wonderful!  There were big moments with spectacular sights, like the enormous trees in Redwood National Forest; there were small, intimate moments where my Mama heart just loved watching the kids hang out together; there were nervous moments, like when a couple coming down a trail told us that they had just seen a black bear; and there were unplanned joys, like a cancellation that gave us the opportunity to take a dune buggy thrill ride that ended up being the highlight of our trip!

But there was one place that really impacted me in an unexpected way, and I think it’s because it felt like a time warp that brought up childhood memories.

I grew up traveling with my family – motel rooms, suitcases, laundry mats, hours in the van . . . that was normal life for me.  We did a lot of hotel hopping on this vacation and at one point, Keith grumbled, “I hate living out of a suitcase.”  I replied, “Then you would have hated my entire childhood.”

Along the way, there were lots of things that reminded me of our years on the road.  Two of the three kids often had to share a bed, which led to lots of complaints about sleep habits.  My brother, Morgan, and I, almost always had to share a bed, and we would create an invisible line down the middle, but I feel like I must have said, “Get your feet off my side!” about a million times as a kid.

The kids would also get excited if there was a pool, just like Morgan and I did, when we were little.  And after unloading the van, the kids would grab the room “key” and go search out the ice machine at the hotel, which was always the first thing Morgan and I would do.  Back then, it was important to get the lay of the land of the place that would be our home for a week at a time.  (And there were lots of different kinds of hotel ice, so we were especially excited if we had a machine that made ice that we fondly referred to as “rabbit turd ice.”)

But it was a retro, quirky little place called the Itty Bitty Inn that really sent me back in time.

Typically, we stay in hotel rooms that are accessed from the inside, which is considered safer.  But when I was a kid, we almost always stayed in motels that could be accessed from the parking lot.  You drove up and parked outside your door, and then opened the door with a key (not a card) with a big key chain with the corresponding room number.

I haven’t stayed in a motel for many years, so when we rolled up to the Itty Bitty Inn, the kids immediately made faces and started complaining that it looked “sketchy.”

Earlier in the spring, when we were plotting out the trip, I heard about this place from a friend of a friend, so I called to get more info.  “Rik the Innkeeper” was just awesome – he spent about 45 minutes on the phone with me discussing the trip and giving me advice.  He’d say, “Can I talk to you like you’re my sister?  If you were my sister I’d tell you that you need to slow down and enjoy yourself.  And make an alternate plan along the coast because you just never know about the wildfires . . . “  Needless to say, Rik won me over and we booked two of the five rooms at the Itty Bitty Inn.

Once everyone met Rik and we got into the rooms, the kids’ attitudes totally changed.  Every room has a theme (one is the Star Trek room and trekkies from far and wide come, with costumes in tow, to stay there) and the kids had the Tiki Cha Cha room, complete with hula outfits.  Keith and I had the Oregon Trail room, and both rooms were very retro, with rotary phones and old school furniture.  There were even Atari consoles which we promptly rented so that the kids could experience, what Rik referred to as, “low-res magic.”

But it wasn’t just the thoughtful throwbacks, like the old-school room key, that made me nostalgic.  It was also Rik’s interaction with all his guests that got me really thinking back to the “old days.”  Rik promptly brought us a cocktail, made sure we were set up with freshly ground coffee for the morning, told us all about the area and where to go.  He even met us at the docks with his own personal crab traps so the kids could experience crabbing.  It just felt like the kind of “real” customer service that you never experience anymore.

The next morning, I got up early to go to the laundry mat (we were gone for two weeks, so it was inevitable), and this also brought back so many memories.  We were on the road for weeks and sometimes months at a time, so my Mom always set aside a day to go to the laundry mat (unless we were staying with a family who didn’t mind us using their machines).  We often tagged along and did our school lessons.

So there I was, staying at this adorable Itty Bitty Inn, and doing laundry at the laundry mat, and I was kind of amazed at how much I had forgotten, until I found myself in a situation that was like a little portal to my childhood.

While I was waiting for the clothes to dry, I called Mom and Dad to talk to them about it.  I asked them if people who owned motels in the early years on the road were as hands-on as Rik had been, and my Dad said, “Oh, yes” and went on to tell me how accommodating the motel staff usually was, and about a place in Deep Gap, NC, where an Indian family who owned the motel took a liking to them and brought them Indian food several times that week.  We had fun reminiscing about the myriad of places we had stayed while traveling.

And frankly, just the constant “togetherness” of our hotel hopping vacation made me feel nostalgic.  I’m not sure how my parents survived staying with two young kids in different motel rooms for months at a time, but they never made us feel bad about it.  We were so used to it, that they’d tell us to go to sleep and somehow, we would, even though they were still up watching TV until much later.

(Side note:  As I got older, I do remember my parents letting me stay up late after evening church services to watch Dynasty, Falcon Crest, and Dallas, which was very exciting.  I still remember the hype and hearing the song “Who Shot JR” at the skating rink.  And my Dad was a big movie buff, so if we stayed in a motel with movie channels, he’d let us stay up and watch movies (we also went to the movies a lot, and to theme parks, pretty much anything in town that was fun – my Dad liked to live big!).  I had no idea how awesome this was until I was a teenager listening to a pastor in my hometown talk about the sin of watching HBO, aka “Hell’s Box Office.”  Thank goodness my Mom and Dad were not legalistic because there were some great movies in the 80’s!  This is a small example of how they protected us on a larger scale – their faith was about freedom and joy, even though we were immersed in a religious world that seemed to regard faith as a set of restrictive rules.  To Mom and Dad, we were just watching movies on HBO, but later on, these sorts of “defiant” actions represented freedom that we didn’t often find in the church world.)

Although it’s kind of annoying to be stuck together in one room, watching the same shows, sharing one bathroom, etc, it’s also great to be stuck together!  You learn a lot about your family when you are confined to one room together.  I always felt so close to my parents and it’s no wonder, because we spent all of our time together, in motel rooms, in the van traveling to a new place, in a new church working together, etc.

The Itty Bitty Inn took me back to my youth, when times were simpler; when each week was new and held divine possibilities for wonder (big and small); when family was my whole world.

It was a wonderful reminder that, when you strip away all the busyness of life and the trappings of modern society, what matters is still simple; each day is still new and holds divine possibilities for wonder (big and small); and family is still my whole world.

Thank you Itty Bitty Inn, for a great big reminder of a wondrous life . . . past, present and future.