Of Hosting and Houseguests , Travelers and Thank-yous

( There's been a perfect storm of contemplations in my head and blog posts out in the world, so I'm committing to digital ink some of observations and passive aggressive instructions. Let's begin. )

An old college friend of a friend of mine has been visiting New York since the day after Thanksgiving. I didn't even know she was coming and I don't think she knew I lived in New York, nevertheless it's always good to know more people around where you are and who doesn't love an excuse for a dinner date. As she and I were chatting on her first day in the city, attempting to sort schedules and find a good evening for dinner, she let me into her small personal hell of trying to find a couch to sleep on. It would seem that out of four cousins and two friends (other than me), she was hard pressed to find anyone willing to let her stay at their place. At the time, she was covered for all but a couple nights, maybe, if she was lucky.

Such is New York, I find. I don't know what it is about this city's culture but from what I've seen, people do not tend to open their homes to travelers all that often. I don't know if its because we all have such limited space as it is, and home is our only psychological refuge from the bustle of the borough, but my friend's story is not the first I've heard like it. I let her in on a well-known secret, however, that our place is always open to guests and old friends.

We have a lot of old friends back in California - some who until recently never left California - who love to come visit a real big city, and we've never had a problem putting them up. We've long since stopped playing tour guide, opting to hand over a couple of tourist guides and a trusty map instead, but they're welcome to a key to the door, an inflatable mattress and warm blanket or four, and dinner if they're home in time. Our most recent guest - a college acquaintance we barely knew - called (well, Facebook-messaged) as a last resort within days of coming, and we were happy to inflate the bed for him (less so later, which I'll get to). As far as we're concerned, our home is open to old friends and friends of friends.

Which all came flooding back to my mind when I reread a passage from Jimmy Carter, reposted on Nathan's blog:

“When Mama was home we never turned away anyone who came to our back door asking for food or a drink of water….One day the lady from the next farm came to visit, and Mama commented on how many tramps she had helped that week. Mrs. Bacon said, “Well, I’m thankful that they never come in my yard.” The next time we had some of the vagrant visitors, Mama asked why they had stopped at our house and not the others. After some hesitation, one of them said, “Ma’am, we have a set of symbols that we use, to show the attitude of each family along the road. the post on your mailbox is marked to say that you don’t turn people away or mistreat us.” After they were gone, we went out and found some unobtrusive scratches; Mama told us not to change them.” — Jimmy Carter, An Hour Before Daylight

Of course, there is another side of the story. For just as we are happy to put up guests, like most reasonable, domesticated people we do expect some measure of decorum of the part of our guests. Now, the vast majority of our guests over time have been perfect gentlepeople. Their habits may be weird (like staying up until 4am and falling asleep to the TV, only to not get up until very late in the afternoon and wonder why the city is boring), but generally most are welcome to come again. But still, I was happy to find via Lifehacker a list of the top-ten ways to be a perfect houseguest. A recent guest of ours would have done well to consider these ...

1. Show up on time. If you tell your host that you’re going to come in on Wednesday morning, show up at that time. If you’re running late make sure to give a call and update your host when you’ll be arriving.
   
   Good advice. The corollary is "Don't be early." If you say you're coming on Sunday afternoon, don't send a text on Saturday morning saying you'll be here in a couple hours. Moreover, if you're taking the Chinatown bus, assume you will be late and try to give updates; believe me, they ain't Amtrak
   
   
2. Bring a gift. To show your appreciation for the free room and board, bring a gift. It doesn’t have to be big or expensive. Baked goods are always appreciated.
   
   A theoretical idea Martha would be proud of, but totally unnecessary. By the way, I prefer reds to whites ;-)
   
   
3. Offer to pay for groceries. If your host will be paying for your food while you stay, offer to chip in for groceries.
   
   If you're staying for a while, at least offer. I'll turn you down, most likely, because just getting around the city will be expensive enough and you probably don't know that yet.
   
   
4. Keep your area neat. Before you leave each day, make sure to make the bed and straighten up your room.
   
   You're "room" is my living room floor. We've had college aged guests not quite understand the value of a clean living room.
   
   
5. Help with chores around the house. Always be willing to help around the house. Help prepare the big holiday meals, wash the dishes, and take out the trash. Don’t wait for you host to say no, just start helping.
   
   My sister is actually very good about this, it brings a tear to my eye. We've come home to clean dishes and a noodle based meal that was quite tasty.
   
   
6. Disclose your schedule. Let your host know your schedule everyday and do all you can to stick to it. This will help you host plan when to serve meals and how late they need to stay up.
   
   Again, the other side of this coin is "Have a schedule ... or at least an idea." We don't play tour guide. We're happy to go out with you, show you a few things, give you some ideas, but we're so over going to Empire, Liberty, and I only go to Times Square when I'm very, very drunk. Ask for input, not an itinerary.
   
   
7. Always ask. Remember, you’re a guest. Even if someone tells you to make yourself at home, still ask before you start using things. It’s just good etiquette.
   
   ESPECIALLY OUR COMPUTERS. That may seem odd, but its happened. Our aforementioned last minute, Chinatown bus taking freebird scheduled somewhat untidy house guest decided it would be a good idea to open Zach's computer while we were at work to "find a song he heard us play." Well when he did that, Zach's IM came on, and I was like "huh?" to get the response "Its just me doing this, I'm leaving now." Yeah. Stay off our computers unless you ask. And if we freely allow you to, which we have happily, don't erase our browser histories just because you looked at porn. We use our histories for legitimate purposes.
   
   
8. Don’t overstay your visit. Try to keep your stay shorter than three days. Your host has things to do and they can’t put their life on hold forever.
   
   
9. Strip the bed before your leave. Your host will likely wash the bed linens after you leave. Help make their job easier by stripping your bed before you leave.
   
   Would be nice. I spent summers traveling with a concert group so doing this or making the bed in the morning is second nature to me. I think most of our guests have been pretty good about this - and the one redeeming quality of our less than favorable guest was that he also deflated the bed and folded it up.
   
   
10. Leave a thank you note. A short handwritten thank you note can go a long way to show your appreciation.
    
    But the most egregious offense is when you don't get any thank you. Isn't this standard? Isn't this like the most common, basic, all around introductory First grade lesson that you thank your hosts in any way? A note is fine. Saying "hey, thanks" is nice. Even a Facebook message would suffice. But to ask randomly when we don't really know you, show up early ... and then late ... use our stuff without asking and generally not really being a good guest and still not even say thanks ... not so cool. On the other hand we have had really nice guests do really nice things, like send us small gifts after the fact - one who didn't even stay with us, all we did was have dinner with her!

Out of the twenty or thirty times we've had guests stay at our place, only once did we ever think it wasn't such a great idea. And really, it doesn't matter if you make your bed, clean up a bit, help with dinner or anything. We're always happy to have people visit the greatest city in the world and more than happy to make that easy by making up a bed. This trend in New York of not doing that baffles me, and hotel prices are out of control, so feel free to come on by.