Summer in Maine is the Season of Guests. Some are here for long planned vacations or reunions, others discover they have a free weekend and head spontaneously down east (”Hey, I’m in Portland and…”). Still others seek long lost Maine friends on Facebook and connect “because I’m coming to Maine.”

Guests are welcomed, cherished, enjoyed, resented, even disliked in turn. We spiff up the house, wash the linens, make up beds, replace light bulbs, add extra toilet paper rolls, check on museum exhibits and local fairs.

The cars pull in, early or late, and spew kids and adults and suitcases and computers and kayaks and cameras and beach toys. The house fills up. There’s sand in the beds, swimsuits on the banisters, half full glasses everywhere, joyful clatter on the stairs. Odd paperback books are jammed behind sofa cushions, shells line the window sills. Odd containers fill the fridge. Shoes are piled in the corners. The compost smells of lobster.

We head out for days at Popham and Reid, the Bowdoin Art Museum, county fairs, lighthouses. We fire up grills and put out yard games. When they leave, we collapse for several days. And there are a slew of new photos to memorialize the generations grinning on the beach, in a boat, at a lobster feed. Then there are the post visit communications asking about the book or stuffed animal left behind.

Mostly, summer guests are a delight.The old friends, friends of friends, relatives, and relatives of relatives, family pets, even the oddball spontaneous guests (one delightful pair of strangers arrived via ultralight planes on a circum- Atlantic trip and landed at the tiny airfield down the road).

One memorable August we had 13 guests, including a family that arrived the day I started teaching and my son started a new school ( and — yes — I had asked in vain if they could come a little earlier or later, but these were the Guests of the Ironclad Schedule – Sorry, we have to come then!). After that, I declared my Inn at Bowdoinham closed on August 15th for the rest of my teaching career.

I now know better how to prepare for guests — and how to deal with most guests issues.

I know to negotiate dates that work for me, to ask about activities they like, and to tell people ahead of time my idiosyncratic rules (animals can come, but no animals on the furniture, for example, which was a point of contention when a newly arrived dog bounded into my living room and tested all the chairs and the couch). I warn of browntail moth and ticks, sunburn and hornet nests. Fickle weather.

One of the worst summer guest events was when the relative of a friend stacked all the dinner plates and put them on the stove burner which had been left on. The plates exploded, sending flaming shards on to the linoleum floor where they burned holes. No one was hurt. I should add that the kitchen linoleum was one of the very few new features in our old house.

One family arrived with a huge Newfoundland dog which had been tranquilized and stuffed in the hatchback for the long trip. The dog celebrated his release by immediately running away and returned hours later having tangled with (a) a porcupine and (b) a skunk. Another family came to Maine for a month having sent a shipping container of visiting gear ahead (I am not joking!).

Then there was the child who had a major asthma attack (I’m told old Maine homes can harbor ten kinds of mold – I now warn visitors). The child who refused to sleep on my couch because “it wasn’t a pull out,” the child who demanded the quirky loft and wouldn’t share it with siblings, the child who asked with wonder why we only had one bathroom that was off the kitchen and was appalled when I described the long ago outhouse it had replaced, the guest who wanted to cook but complained about my pots and pans. Children who won’t eat my selection of cereals. Guests who rise and make loud noise at 5 am or keep drinking until midnight.

Yet, years later, I get a glow when an adult recalls his idyllic childhood visit to Maine and the boat ride on the bay.

My reward after thirty-eight years in Maine came this past summer. A family of five that I nominate for the Best Guests Ever Award. Take notes, future summer guests!

First, the guests arrived when they said they would (we had made arrangement months ahead)! They acted delighted with the accommodations. The kids (8-10-13) quickly, and without bickering, divvied up the sleeping spaces. They brought their favorite cereals and generously stocked the kitchen twice during the visit with things they — and I — wanted. They took me out to meals twice. They bought the lobsters for the requisite lobster feed. They chipped in cheerily to any chore, did the dishes, swept the floor, cooked meals, hung their swimsuits and towels outside on the line. When I woke up each day at my usual time, the house was quiet, anyone awake was reading or doing crafts in the living room, the sink was clean and coffee was brewing. Wonderful. We had some plans and concocted others at breakfasts. We did Popham on a glorious sunny day with breeze, stayed just long enough so no one was cranky or sunburned. On the rainy day we visited farmstands and bookstores and the Arctic Museum. One day was pretty much spent lolling around. No one ever used the word “bored.” And several times the parents swept the kids off so I “could have some down time” alone.

Before they left, they stripped the beds, folded all the blankets, toted the sheets to the washing machine, emptied the wastepaper baskets, swept, took out the compost, took away the ends of food, checked their quarters three times to find things that might have been left, and departed when they said they would, each person hugging me and thanking me profusely.

And I never found a single odd sock, beloved stuffed animal or half read book left behind!