Welcome to “Dear Daybreak”, a weekly Daybreak column. It features short vignettes about life in the Upper Valley: an encounter, some wry exchange with a stranger or acquaintance… Anything that happened in this region or relates to it and strikes a contributor as interesting or funny or poignant—or that makes us appreciate living here.

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Dear Daybreak:

Yesterday I was driving along Route 100 near Chelsea. I came across two people near the side of the road: A man on a lawnmower, and a woman with her thumb stuck out like a hitchhiker. I slowed down, wondering if they needed help. The woman leaned in the car window and said, "I told him people around here look out for each other. Thanks for stopping." Evidently it was a bet, and she had won. I asked if I passed the test. She smiled and said, "You passed the test. Thanks for being kind," and wished me well on my journey.

— Krista Karlson, Thetford

Dear Daybreak:

It’s May. Don’t complain. You’re supposed to be chilly and eat your chocolate Easter egg. You should wear your best skirt, the one from the Norwich Nearly New Sale. You’re supposed to get it a little dirty and feel like half a girl. You’re supposed to take lots of pictures and live half inside them.

The only problem with spring is where to be happiest (Hemingway said that, not me). Today we have decided to be happiest in Mink Brook, so we are walking down Maple Street toward the river. Today, the wind is conversational. I say hello to the porch that used to be mine. Green buds freckle the trees and I stop and congratulate them on their steady effort to give the afternoon texture.

Ava is wearing stripes because Ava is always wearing stripes. A gust of air combs her hair back and we are reminded of where we are, which is here, but other places, too. She tells me that this is the same wind you feel at the beach; wind that’s too cold but won’t ruin anything. It’s just as much the architecture of the day as the sand and the waves.

We went to Quaker meeting this morning, and I could not settle into that silence. I was too warm and I picked at my cuticles until they bled and I couldn’t help but watch the other people be still, some of them with their eyes closed (and something about this feels both intrusive and perfectly ordinary, like seeing naked older women in a locker room.)

I watched one very small girl squirm in her seat. She slid out of her mother’s grasp and pranced around the silent sitters, undaunted by the quiet because there are more important things to do than be still – like grow up and practice her vocal cords and wiggle out her little legs. Her mother chased her through the aisles and later a woman said, I am so grateful that there are children here, the same way she is grateful for the budding trees and the returning spring wind.

As we walk, Ava points out birds’ nests. I am struck by the fact that some of these nests are old and will be recycled by strange, freeloader birds. I tug at Ava’s arm and ask her if she thinks that’s unfair.

We do that, too, Ava replies. People take things for themselves. Things they didn’t help build.

Hemingway said that the only thing to spoil a spring day was people. People were always the limits of happiness, except the very few that were as good as spring itself. Here’s Ulla, wearing her patchwork-quilt skirt. Good. She is in love with the day and is telling it so. Ava asks Ulla what color she is and she responds a shade of purple. And Catherine is mahogany, and the sun is so bright that it makes the shadows solid. Ulla spills tea on the gingham picnic blanket and apologizes. We watch a duck dunk its head into the brook and I wonder what it is like to live half underwater.

Today at the meeting, Mary Ann had a few strands of tinsel knotted into her gray hair. It sparkled in the silence. We all thought it was fabulous and later we told her so. She thanked us and said she’d gotten some compliments at the senior living center she calls home. Later, I’d watch Ulla and Catherine touch the leaves of a squat, fluffy bush, yellowed on one side by the sun, and talk about hair. How each length is a season of life, of love.

During the meeting, Mary Ann stood and told the room that spring is all about hope.

I didn’t disagree with her, but I think that this season’s real lesson is patience, because no matter how much you hope, you can’t make the geese come home before they’re due. Hope is very American. Patience is not.

The fake-ocean breeze makes the leaves living. When they hurry across grass you see them for a moment as squirrels. Stillness is a discipline that the breeze will never learn.

At Quaker meetings, a woman tells the silent room that there’s me, there’s you, and there’s something else. And the something else is why we’re all here today. I give myself an assignment: take videos of the wind. Like spring itself, the wind is substanceless, so I take videos of the ripples in the river and Ulla’s shivering skirt and the trees that lurch and threaten. My hair catches in my mouth and I spit it out.