Barns to Shanties

It's amazing how the smallest thing can send your brain out on a tangent.  Maybe that is part of getting older.

This morning I heard from a past real estate client asking if she could use a photo of mine of an old barn in Lima, New York.  She said she was laying out an ad for a client that wants a photo of a barn and immediately thought of me.  I use to spend my days driving the backroads of upstate New York selling real estate but I alway carried a camera with me.  And if it was a barn studded road that I was traveling, I was often late for my appointment.  People just got use to it and accepted that about me.

The client that called me is Kathryn.  She is a lovely lady in every sense of the word.  She had a career in modeling that could have taken her to the big city.  But she also has small-town values and dreams of raising her family just like she was raised.  I met the family when they were looking to buy their first home.  I still remember the first phone call I received from her husband because we chatted like we'd known each other forever.  Their first born daughter was in preschool and their second daughter was not yet conceived.  The oldest is now in high school.  Wow!

These days I wander back roads looking more for crab shanties than barns.  Sure, I miss the big old barns that pepper the landscape in Western New York.  But even more, I miss the relationships that I formed with young families as they bought their first home and then moved on as their family grew.  Yea, I called Kathryn a past client, but in my heart I feel that she and many of my other clients are more like extended family.  And I'm touched that she thought of me when she needed a barn photo.