Bisbee, AZ : Brattleboro, VT

I am looking out the window at a spectacular sunset—beautiful even if it is only 4:30pm. We've had another few days' reprieve from the onset of winter, with temperatures in the 50s and maybe even up into the 60s tomorrow. So I spent a couple hours this afternoon raking leaves and dragging them via tarp to the compost heap. Still have a few piles to go, but we're just about done. Last year we raked the leaves into piles and then snow fell on them (in late October, as I recall) before we could get them carted off the lawn, and the snow never left us again until April. I've felt mightily oppressed these past weeks by the thought of another winter starting before fall is even over and lasting until spring is halfway done, so I'm thrilled to have a longer stretch of reasonably warm weather before the onslaught begins this year.

On Friday, James and I took a little overnight trip to Brattleboro, VT, for a little R&R before the Thanksgiving/Advent/Christmas crush is upon us. We'd intended to go last spring, had motel reservations and were packing to leave the next day, when my mother went into the hospital for a persistent fever and suddenly sank into a coma. The doctors said, "She's unresponsive. We don't know why." Unresponsive: is this something you go immediately to her bedside for, or do you go ahead with your vacation plans and see what develops? The doctors just repeated, "She's unresponsive. We don't know why. We can't predict anything." Only later did we learn that "unresponsive" is doctor lingo for "coma." And that Mom went into a coma because of a stroke. When she died two weeks later, James and I were both really glad we'd put off our Brattleboro trip in favor of going immediately to Mom's bedside. But I did get a little superstitiously anxious when we made reservations again in Brattleboro and prepared to leave. Would James's dad, who just got back home after 6 weeks in a rehab center for a dislocated shoulder after a fall, suddenly take a turn for the worse, or fall again? Would some other loved one have a stroke and die? Is Brattleboro a jinx place for us?

Fortunately, the answer is no. Brattleboro is a lovely town that we'll be visiting again many times, I'm sure—and nobody got sick or went into the hospital or died while we were gone. I think it will become our Massachusetts Bisbee, our haven from the day-to-day rush: a hippie town with great bookstores and art and music and food. Laid-back, friendly (the people there are really chatty!), a beautiful place at the end of a beautiful hour-and-a-half drive. Just like Bisbee, AZ. And built on a steep hillside, too, just like Bisbee—another place to keep us in good shape as we hoof it up and down Main St. I can tell we'll be spending a lot of time there.


[Top photo: Brattleboro, VT
Bottom photo: Bisbee, AZ, during a rare blizzard the last time we visited]