By LIZ MARCHI
The older I get, the more I believe we are wired very early in life for a certain path. My husband and I share a lot of the same wiring and lot of very different wiring. We both love getting a lot done but he loves details and negotiating, I love big picture, visioning and loving the team across the finish line. We share a love of business, startups, challenges and our children.
When it comes to planning for life changes, we aren’t seeing things the same way. Don’t worry; we are still crazy for each other. However, I would like to have a more orderly plan for aging. He would prefer to die with his boots on, like his grandfather did, still working into his 90’s. I want different work, the kind where EIBDTA isn’t the biggest part of the equation. I want to return to being more of a homemaker and I would like a smaller home and yard. I would like to downsize my stuff. I grew up in a college town and would like to grow old in one. A place where the life of the mind is central. My husband likes the wild and open landscape of the ranch. I would bet he has absolutely no plans to clean out his 50 years of papers stored, not very neatly, in the barn and very neatly, in his office.
Yard work at the Ranch–haying
This summer has been a hard one for me. It’s been hot. I don’t like really hot anymore. I did my time in Alabama and North Carolina in the hot sun. I really don’t like grasshoppers. We have grasshoppers this summer and they are eating my plants. It’s dry and dusty and I don’t like dust. Our summer driveway is a big rut pit because of irrigation. My rancher husband loves it because everyone has to drive slower.
We are working on compromise. I am working out with a trainer one day a week. At least for one hour each week I am sure that what I am doing is good for me. Slowly, I am wading back into ranch-based projects that I said I was done with, like picking up rocks.
Home
Our wonderful therapist reminded me that this man I love so much wouldn’t be this man I love so much with out his great passion, cows, grass and space. One thing I am sure of, I want to be together. So I have secret plan B and C but until them, it’s summer in Montana and we are ranching, irrigating, mowing, haying and playing.
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Liz Marchi lives on a ranch in Polson, Montana with her husband Jon. She is the Fund Coordinator for the Frontier Angel Fund and spends a lot of time thinking and learning about entrepreneurs, the economy and Montana’s unique place in the world. She has three daughters and a stepson and daughter and a grandchild. She graduated from Hollins College and is entering the final quarter of life…unless we go into overtime.