Social security enrollment, check. Mortgage paid off, check. And still I was packing up my belongings, moving to temporary quarters, and renting out my house by the week to summer tenants. Twenty years and counting. Why?

I gave my regular tenants notice: the following summer would be my swan song. I was retiring from landlord-ing. I’m truly sorry, but you will need to find other rentals going forward. It’s not you. It’s me.  

Every last one of them took the news with grace. Which made me feel more like a Scrooge.  

My regulars were lovely people. Young families, for the most part. They had always treated my home like they wanted to be welcomed back. And heretofore, they always were. Oh, there were exceptions to these ideal tenants. Let’s not go there, other than to say: over the twenty years, only three parties made it to my black ball list. I would call that a good run.  

It was 2019 when I gave tenants notice that the following year was the end of the road. Generous advance time for them to scout “house right” for 2021. Well, who knew 2020 would go poof with a pandemic? All but one family canceled their bookings for that summer and holed up wherever home was. Every last one beseeched me to postpone their leases to 2021, considering. Just one more year. Pretty please? 

Okaaay. Scrooge has a heart. But 2021 was it. Full stop. Come Covid, locusts, or anything else.  

The landlord routine simply got old. I had it down pat, though: shoving the personal effects of winter into owner’s closets; tidying up, if only enough to avoid shame in the eyes of the cleaners-for-hire; riding my handyman to put out the patio furniture, re-stain the porch deck, or finally replace the torn window screen. And, by the way, handyman, why were the leaves of fall still clogging the gutters of spring?    

Meanwhile, across town, I’d open the humble landlord retreat to the breezes of June. It’s not lost on me that, on this challenged Island, I was blessed with an alternate place to lay my head. I got the water turned on, evicted cobwebs and ants, unshrouded furniture, washed windows, plugged in the fridge, then shuffled food and clothing and whatnot from house A to house B. Danged if at least one garment in transit didn’t slip from a hanger onto the ground.  

Then, finally, checking house A to make sure every wee thing was ready for tenant prime time. Did I test the AC? Was the utensil drawer organized? Did I remember to take my phone charger? Did I lock the owner’s closets? Did I put the tenant manual out in plain sight? Did I move breakables and danger out of toddler reach? Did I leave coffee filters in the cabinet? Not that I was responsible for coffee filters, but no landlord needs tenants feeling cranky on their first morning because they can’t make coffee.  

Even in seasons of utmost clockwork, something remained undone hours before the first tenants were due to check in. They may have already cruised past the house a few times, conspicuous as heck in a monster SUV fairly bulging with Costco supplies, bikes hitched to the rear. They’d roll by slowly. They’d know darn well they were ahead of check-in time, but they’d driven through the darkness of the wee hours to make a ferry at daybreak, and the kids were irritable, and they were just hoping the virtual welcome mat was out. It wasn’t.     

But by golly, all got done before the opening bell.

Time for the landlord to relax? No. Next up: that phone call from the rental agent the next day. “Hi…” the agent would begin in a tone of sorry-to-bother-you. Uh-oh. The cable remote wasn’t working. Or the propane tank was missing from the grill. Or the smoke detectors started screaming at 5 a.m. Or the Wi-Fi wasn’t working. God forbid the Wi-Fi wasn’t working. God forbid the tenant had lacked for a coffee filter and a cup of morning joe, on top of whatever else.     

That call rarely came, though. In fact, a whole rental season often went by without a peep. Nevertheless, the stress of anticipation was endless for eight to ten weeks, through five or six lease periods, until around Labor Day, when the last of the overloaded SUVs rolled away. The landlord exhaled, if only for a short while before house shuffling began in reverse.              

What collateral damage of the season would come to light? A stain on a throw pillow? The set of eight soup bowls now downsized to seven? A tear in the screen that had been recently replaced? Do not be a landlord if common wear and tear makes you crazy. Spare your ire for the rare big thing.    

The potted annuals on the patio that were so lush in June might be parched and leggy, the soil hard as cement. The tenant manual didn’t proscribe plant watering, but…c’mon, people. Inevitably, the contents of the kitchen cabinets would be somewhat rearranged – for the better on one occasion, I’ll admit. Yet always enough to confound my food preparations for several weeks after I moved back in.  

Retirement was an act of self-love. Yet landlord-ing, too, had been self-loving in its fashion.    

When the home was first built and the seedlings of grass began to green up, there was this vision outside the back window. Imaginary but vivid. My future step-grandkids were playing some barefoot runabout in the yard. White plumes of smoke rose from the patio grill. On the kitchen island, an Eileen Blake’s pie box hinted at the treat to come later. After sundown, three generations would sprawl out in front of a movie. Perhaps Jaws for the umpteenth time. Grandma would resist scolding them about the popcorn on the floor until after the movie was over.    

Well, my marriage withered within a few years of the house’s paint going dry. No future generations would ever run about the yard, spill popcorn, or otherwise fill the home with love IRL.    

What was a home that begged for a family to do?  

Get rented to unknown families on vacation is what. And lo, the landlord realized she got to play fairy grandmother. She waved her wand and wallet and – shazam – the home filled with picture books and kids’ games. Sippy cups appeared in the kitchen cupboard. Beach noodles and boogie boards hugged the walls of the garage.                  

Tenants relayed friendly messages now and then about how much the girls delighted in bubble baths in the footed tub. Or about the quilts, set of knives, or some other new thing I had introduced that season. Sweet surprises sometimes welcomed me after a checkout: a bouquet of sunflowers, a poem about summer in a child’s handwriting, an unopened jar of some chi-chi condiment from Trader Joe’s, a scallop shell, or wrapped mint at the feet of the angel artifacts on the hallway table. The table wasn’t intended as a shrine, but the offerings moved me just the same. One tenant shipped me four delicate cabernet globes from Williams Sonoma, with a letter of profuse apology, to replace the one cheap glass they’d chipped.      

Come the gray days of December, I would receive the occasional holiday card. Perhaps a family portrait taken on a beach that was telltale Vineyard. Only by surnames on leases did I otherwise know these beaming, sun-kissed strangers.       

It was all good. It is good still. The home is nourished with summer visitors anew. People I know for a change. One week, it may be cousins. Another week, it’s friends with littles. Sometimes it’s just big people – my college buddies or hometown besties. These are not tenants. They are my guests, free of charge. Their stay is my pleasure, not my business. Are they perfect occupants in every way? Oh, please. But to heck with, say, the fish innards left in the garbage can under the hot sun of July. The home hums with humanity, is what counts. Is that a smile on its face? I think that’s a smile.