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.

Want to submit a Dear Daybreak item? Just go here!

Dear Daybreak:

From our vantage point in downtown Norwich we are treated to all the wonderful town activities that mark the town’s year. Like the Bike-To-School days, where at the corner of Hazen and Main the little ones assemble to join the last leg to the school, trikes and small two-wheelers aplenty. We stand at the windows, coffee mugs in hand, and smile.

Or how about the Christmas Pageant? We’ve been “marshals” at our corner many times, coffee mugs with not-coffee in hand, barring errant cars from disrupting the huge procession of townspeople taking part in this most beautiful annual ritual.

The flags miraculously appearing on the telephone poles for the Fourth of July. It would tug at your heart to see them fluttering, quietly hoisted by the volunteers who make sure we mark our patriotism.

And at this time of year? It’s the mating dance at the Norwich Public Library of Marion Cross School sixth graders, evidenced by the girls screaming as the boys chase them around the building in a game of tag, you’re it, and I think I like her! We laugh.

Living here is the best recipe for staying young.

— Sue Pitiger, Norwich

Dear Daybreak:

Snake Skin

A snake skin is only a snake skin until given to the ten-year-old who has barely begun to trust in you

He too may shed some doubts like translucent scales from his troubled heart

And peel you too with his searching look back to something forgotten but true in nature’s fragile design held weightless and shimmering in his restless young eyes

Some day you pray with grace and ease you both may shed these clumsy skins in tall lush grass and slip away

— Danny Dover, Bethel

Dear Daybreak,

“Mike, I’ve found Mecca!” my father, Pete, announced when I answered the phone.

It was 1986 and dear old Dad had just retired. He was looking for a peaceful summer retreat to escape the brutal Florida summer heat. He envisioned his golden years in a somewhat rural area where he could pursue his passions of gardening, reading and fishing.

Pete and I were both single with no strings attached. I had joined him the two previous summers, rolling through six states in search of the perfect spot. He was tempted by a home with a ten- acre cherry grove near Traverse City, Michigan. Then he almost settled on a home in North Carolina, but felt that there were too many Florida folks there in the summer.