Home-Away-From-Home; Not a Hotel

Dear Neighbors,

My husband and I have been full-time residents in the historic district of Mystic for over 30 years. Several years ago, we decided to buy a second home and chose to buy it in our hometown, Mystic.

We don’t have one home and one hotel. We have two homes we care deeply about and open up to guests who come to Mystic for many different reasons. When we read in these posts or hear in the town meetings that we are running a hotel, we find it is troubling.

Our other home welcomes guests and allows them to experience Mystic from a very personal side- it’s their home-away-from-home while they stay. Why is it not a hotel? Our family doesn’t stand at a front desk while guests are staying. We don’t do daily house cleaning (though we have wonderful cleaners who help us clean between guests). We don’t have room service. We don’t operate a restaurant or bar in our home. We don’t offer extended amenities like a spa, pool, or workout room. We don’t even offer valet parking as our guests park in the driveway next to our home. Our home isn’t a multilevel hotel with elevators, corridors, and up to several hundred rooms, and it is not part of a national chain of similar properties.

So what is it then? It is making cookies with grandma. It is bedside stories with twin beds that have quilts. It is counting how many ships are in a bottle. It is a host leaving an apple pie. It is time in the backyard on a summer night with smores and a ghost story. It is a rocking chair with lemonade and a friend. It is going to Ford’s for live lobsters. It is taking the garbage out on Wednesday nights (and yes, our guests do that, too). It is getting a call from a guest to tell us a family of ducks moved into the backyard (really). It is movie night on the couch. It is a host leaving fresh lilacs with a note. It is conversations, laughter, and even tears around the table. And so much more. It is memories that last a lifetime. It all takes place in our home as this wouldn’t be possible in a hotel.

Our family has gotten to know so many guests personally- even if we’ve not met them face to face- it’s like strangers become friends, and they share how they feel and what staying at our second home in Mystic has meant to them. Since our homes are an extension of who we are, we share a part of us with them, and they share a part of themselves with our family. It’s been truly extraordinary and humbling to be part of something so special.

We embrace all the responsibilities of home ownership with our other home. We garden, clean, take mail in, take brush to the transfer station, visit our neighbors, pay the bills, and do maintenance weekly. This past spring, our sons helped us paint the exterior of our other home- what a learning experience for all of us, and we all felt proud of working together and providing a special little house for visitors to call their home-away-from-home.

We are not a corporation or outside investors. We are a local Mystic family who opens up our home to guests just like we’ve done for years and years- even before we bought our second home. Most importantly, we would like to work with our neighbors because we care about them, and we care about Mystic!