No rest for the worry

©2016 Lydia Hinshaw

 A tree shows its colors in Hanover, NH

Maple leaves on a boardwalk in Plymouth, VT

 LINCOLN, NH -- First the good news:  We are safe, 1,350 miles from the hurricane party Matthew is throwing tonight.
 Our friends and neighbors, and our house, all sit in the bulls-eye. We have been there, done that, and I feel weirdly guilty that I am not there now, waiting for the power to go out, waiting for the wind to roar like the longest train ever, waiting for our street to be paved green with pureed leaves.
 Our handyman boarded up the windows Wednesday afternoon, and there is nothing more that we could have done, had we been at home.
 And so we wait in a comfortable motel, our camping trip temporarily suspended so that we will have television and Internet tonight. A sobering thought: The Magic Bus, sitting just outside our door, may be the only home we have left tomorrow.

 A destroyed house would be one more calamity in what has already been a bad year, with nearly three months still to go.  Since last November, Prince Charming has survived an obstacle course of health problems.  As soon as he began to recover from one disaster, another would crop up. Two emergency room visits, two surgeries, three hospitalizations, too many doctors' appointments to count.
 I learned many basic nursing skills.  Some days, I wore a path between the house and the drugstore.
 Our traditional spring departure for the West was delayed, and delayed, and delayed again until there was no more summer left.
 Last week, the Prince felt well enough to travel, and we had a three-week window without medical appointments.  We finally hit the road on Sept. 29.
 We did a training-wheels vacation at first, camping three nights along the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina.  We needed to see how the Prince would tolerate traveling, and van-sleeping.  If he didn't feel well, we were only a day's drive from home.
 He passed all the tests and wanted to keep heading north.  I have visited New England many times, but never in October, when the hardwoods dress up in their brightest colors. 
 The weather has been perfect.  Thursday afternoon, we walked around the Dartmouth campus, where student sunbathers littered the lawns.  Tour buses full of leaf-watchers prowl the back roads.
 New England villages are almost professionally picturesque, and many have avoided the plagues of franchises that bring a boring sameness to most American towns.
 It would be a great trip, except for the disturbing events back home.