It’s 6:35 a.m. when I unlock the hardware store’s back door, let myself in, and shut off the alarm. We don’t open until 7:30 today but I always like to be early.

I enjoy the quiet.

The store’s been in my family for over fifty years. My dad’s father started it and kept it running until Dad took over. Grandpa has been dead over twenty years, but I remember when he still worked in the store, even after my father was technically running it.

Grandpa never could let it go, and it was forever a source of irritation to Dad, who felt it was a passive-aggressive commentary on how he ran it.

It wasn’t, though. Grandpa just wanted to feel…useful. Needed.

Like he wasn’t being put out to pasture.

I think I always knew I’d end up running it, mostly because I wanted to. Both my parents and Grandpa insisted I go to college first, though. My business degree and marketing minor have helped me keep our local store relevant when many others like it have long since folded. From my grandfather and father I learned the fine arts of customer service, communication, and building community loyalty.

It’s why I know a little about everything from horse feed to electrical wiring, from holiday light displays to raising chickens, from smokers to canning systems, and the difference between mustard greens and collard greens.

It’s why people will pay a little extra to purchase from my store rather than order something from Amazon, or drive all the way over to the large home improvement store in Colley. In fact, I frequently have customers drive all the way here from Colley, because I will special order items, or stock things that the big-box store can’t be bothered to order.

I don’t take that community support for granted, either. I guarantee you when a water pipe explodes in your basement in the middle of the night and you can’t afford an emergency plumber call, the Mega Warehouse manager won’t get out of bed to sell you what you need to fix it so your kids can flush the toilet in the morning when they get up for school.

He also won’t hurry over to your house to look at the situation first to see exactly what you need and make sure you know how to safely remedy the issue.

Or roll up his sleeves to show you how to properly braze a new pipe into place.

It’s impossible for me to compete on price and volume, so I make up for that in other ways. So far, it’s provided me with a comfortable life. Adjusted for inflation, the store’s even more profitable now than when my father and grandfather ran it. Years ago, my father learned not to kvetch at me when I came up with new ideas, like kids’ classes, and partnering with the library to create exhibits. I don’t mean I’m rich—far from it.

But I don’t have a mortgage on the house or the store, we pay our bills on time, I can afford to pay my employees a decent wage that keeps them loyal to me, and I can even give them health insurance, the part-timers as well as the full-timers.

Overall, life is good.

Even if it feels like I encounter painful memories every time I turn around. If there is one area of my life that’s not blessed, it’s my love life. Apparently, all the blessings I have gained are balanced out by that dark emotional cave I do my best to avoid. Three years out, you’d think I’d have moved on.

Not so much, it turns out.

I flip on lights as I make my way through the building and, eventually, upstairs to my office on the second floor. I take the stairs instead of the elevator to the upstairs, because I need the exercise, quite frankly.

Today, we’re holding a class on orchids for the ladies’ group from the Methodist church but that’s not until after lunch. We do more than just teach our classes here—we loan and rent the space to other local groups and events, too. Sometimes, we have more than one event going on, because we have a smaller, unused office that we use for things like meetings and potlucks in addition to the larger space. It used to be my dad’s office, but Mom finally made him clean it out and I haven’t had the heart to use it for anything else.

We have guest presenters come in to lecture and teach on a variety of topics. We bring in small artisan shows. We host the local schools’ science fair competitions every year, plus we work closely with the science departments of those schools to help them with their curriculums.

We are the community.

I think Dad truly started letting go of his control of the store and ceding daily operations to me twelve years ago when one of the first decisions I made after graduating college and returning home was to contact the schools and arrange the science fair program. He didn’t see the value in it, until the initial bump in sales following that deal continued to grow with parents admitting they wanted to shop with us if we were that vested in their kids.

Loyalty.

Something I prize, something woven into the very fabric of my family’s history.

Something I wish others valued as much as I do.

Something that got my heart shattered—forgetting that loyalty isn’t a universal trait in others.