The Alberts own and operate the Oak Bluffs Inn, the large pink Victorian building with a wraparound front porch and octagonal tower at the end of Circuit Avenue. Erik and a couple of his friends, owners of nearby inns, shops, and restaurants, jokingly call this fairly new commercial area “SoCa,” for South Circuit Avenue, because it’s an Oak Bluffs sort of SoHo. There’s a neighborhood feeling and everyone supports each other’s businesses.
    
The Alberts moved in six years ago, and that first winter they started renovating, stripping the walls of some seriously flowered wallpaper. Rhonda’s the interior decorator, and she picked the colors to paint each room. “I chose fresh, clean, contemporary colors that are soothing and peaceful for sleeping,” says Rhonda of tones such as glacier blue and a deep sage alfresco that make the inn feel both relaxed and elegant.  
    
The Alberts want their guests to feel welcome, but since this is also a family home with children, they want people to know they’ll be staying at a more intimate establishment than a hotel. “If people want a closer connection, we’re here to give them the name of a restaurant or tell them more about the Island,” Rhonda says. Guests often bond with each other and with the Alberts, and look forward to returning to see how the kids have grown from one summer to the next.
    
In the summer when they’re not taking care of guests, they inhabit a small apartment on the third floor. When the last guest leaves in October, Erik, Rhonda, and the kids filter down into the lower floors, reclaiming a room here and a room there. The room with the sunny bay window becomes the plant room where ficuses flourish and orchids catch up on their beauty rest after performing in guest rooms all summer. A room on the second floor becomes the sorting room, filled with an accumulation of beach accessories, a crib, baby carrier, outgrown clothes, and toys ready to be
recycled. In winter, the Alberts have time to catch up on chores and family life, and a whole house to do it in, though usually the children would rather be upstairs in the small third floor apartment where it’s warm and sunny, important attributes in a big old house during the cold months. Downstairs, shower curtains borrowed from guest bathrooms hang across open doorways, holding in the heat. Enough warmth rises to the apartment, where the floor of the main room is thick with children’s toys, to keep the family comfortable. Shelves of books line the walls – Erik’s father is a Random House salesman – and a desk overflows with Rhonda’s paperwork. The kids sleep in bunk beds in a tiny adjoining room, and Erik and Rhonda’s small bedroom is down the hallway. The family doesn’t move into any of the empty bedrooms in the winter because, as Erik says, “It means moving twice.” However, he claims a second floor bathroom as his own, keeping it however he wants. No one complains; there are no guests to please.
    
There’s time for cooking in the winter, and the Alberts use the inn’s kitchen on the first floor. The room where the summer guests eat breakfast at six round café tables becomes the dining room, and the buffet table expands to seat the family. The adjoining living room remains much the same as it is in summer, with stuffed chairs and antique sideboard. The TV – modest in size and meant to encourage guests to enjoy the finer pleasures of Vineyard summer life – is replaced by a large TV with Surround Sound.

A PlayStation 2 hooks up to the TV and lets Iris and Miles do virtual skateboarding with Tony Hawk in parks around the world.
    
In the front hallway, where the beach towels are stacked in summer, a basket holds plastic bowling pins that are set up in the hallway or the living room or anywhere. The nice thing about winter is that the family can do whatever it wants without fear of disturbing anyone. Only Rhonda and Erik were bothered the time Miles tried to skateboard down the curving staircase one winter. “We don’t have to worry about noise,” says Rhonda, “or saying the right or wrong things.” For six months they get to be just a family living in a large house.
    
But even in summer, things aren’t too strict. Rhonda has a childhood image of happy kids growing up in a big house, so some things that kids love to do, like sliding down the banister, are allowed even in the season of guests. She and Erik want the inn to feel like the kind of place where a child making an entrance off the end of a banister is perfectly acceptable.
    
Still, Iris and Miles both have spent their whole lives at the inn and know the difference between public space and family space, and know how to behave around the guests. Rhonda says her children are quieter than most kids because they’ve learned not to be too rowdy when their private home becomes a public inn. When she was younger, Iris used to help her dad check in the guests, showing them where breakfast is served and where the sherry bar is located in the living room. It took Miles longer to adjust to strangers in his house, and he used to say “I don’t like you” to people who spoke to him as he passed through the breakfast tables on his way to find Mom in the kitchen. Rhonda taught him to put his head down as he walked by, and now at three he’s progressed to saying “Hi” to the guests.
    
Iris wishes the family lived in the country where she could have pets and a horse, but the Alberts make the most of life in downtown Oak Bluffs.  In the summer, Iris loves to walk in the Camp Ground, where she and Miles often play with the children staying in the houses around the Tabernacle. The families who come to stay at the inn are on vacation and their children are always eating ice cream and riding the Flying Horses. To alleviate some of Iris and Miles’s envy of this holiday lifestyle, Rhonda keeps a good supply of frozen fruit pops and often takes the kids to the carousel. The Alberts’ two favorite restaurants are right across the street, and sometimes Erik and Rhonda go out to eat, keeping an eye on the inn from their dinner table. Or else one of the guests sitting on the front porch will play innkeeper.
    
The front porch plays a vital role in the life of the inn. Porch parties are regular occurrences on summer evenings. Guests like to hang out and watch what goes on in the street or at the restaurants across the way. One night a couple staying at the inn got engaged sitting at a table in the window of  The Sweet Life Café. They returned to the inn later and told the porch sitters their big news. “We already know,” they all said.

“We saw you through the window.”

Erik’s the front man at the inn; he meets the guests and shows them to their rooms. He describes another part of his job as “wine and beer drinker,” which involves hanging out on the front porch with the guests, confirming celebrity sightings. “I tell them that guy they thought looked just like Kevin Spacey probably was him.” To help create the easygoing ambiance of the inn, Erik cultivates a balance of work and fun. While he works long hours all summer and does repairs on the inn during the winter, he also takes off to Utah for three weeks of snowboarding and goes kayaking whenever he can in the summer.

Rhonda’s the visionary and nurturer of the inn’s finer aspects; she’s the gardener and decorator, in charge of elegance. She also has the unglamorous, behind-the-scenes jobs of ordering, number crunching, and taking care of the kids. Rhonda’s previous experience as a nurse is apparent in how she oversees the comfort of the guests. “It’s nice when we meet someone’s expectations,” she says.
    
The Alberts have found their niche in the world. For Erik, being an innkeeper is the perfect job, one he believes was meant for him. Rhonda likes being around people who are in happy vacation moods. “It’s like being in the middle of a constant celebration,” she says. “You can sit and watch and be part of it.”
    
On the night The Sweet Life Café opens its patio for the season, Rhonda and Erik sit out on their third floor balcony looking down at the café with all its lights shining. Rhonda knows famous people come to eat at the café, but she can’t make out the faces of any of the people sitting at the tables. It doesn’t matter because what she sees is “people looking glamorous and beautiful,” and she thinks, “Here we go.” The season is beginning.