I discovered this gem while I was in Truth or Consequences, NM this week, enjoying my sister’s spring break with her. We chose T or C because we wanted to slow down, relax, walk, and recharge. If you want to slow down, T or C is the right place for you, especially if you visit during the week, when everything is closed – as we did – instead of on weekends when it comes to life. They have hot springs.

But as we wandered into the few stores that were open, we encountered a gallery featuring the books of June Jewell, a local artist and author, and this one had to come home with me.

It’s a delightful bedtime book, perfect for reading with little ones who need to go to sleep. It starts with the narrator remembering how her own mother helped her fall asleep when she was little and then teaching her own children – and the reader – the same. My sister read it that evening and said it would have been a good night-night book for her kids when they were little. It feels like the kind of book that could become part of a bedtime routine.

“Close your eyes gently and think of good things,”
is something my mom said to me
my head on my pillow, tucked into bed
I listed things that I loved.

A sense of warmth fell over me
as my mind was filled with good things.

Beautifully illustrated with pictures of sleeping children – and sometimes their sleeping mama’s – poetically told, it ends with a wish for all children to find good things to dream about when they go to bed tonight, and prompts to help children think of little things they might be grateful for. If it weren’t for the cat from hell who has made it her purpose in life to destroy any book she finds on my bedside table, I might make it an evening meditation to read this book to myself every night.

Self-published. You can pick up your copy in T or C – go for a long weekend, maybe a F, S, S not a S, S, M – at Snakestone Studios gallery or Black Cat Coffee.

Breakfast at Passion Pie Cafe; dinner at the Outer Edge Pizzeria (good enough even for a New York pizza palate) and grab some sandwiches for the road while you explore the nearby towns. Go for a hike at Elephant Butte lake and have dinner on the patio of Bigfoot Restaurant. Pick up some t-shirts and maybe some art at Dust. Drop into the beautiful art deco post office to mail your postcards and Xochi’s Bookstore and Gallery to browse an amazing selection of used books on history, natural sciences, and New Mexico. We stayed at the Blackstone Hotsprings (and lodgings) which was comfortable and clean and had a private hot spring on the patio that you could use any time you wanted.*

Everyone we met in T or C – and the surrounding “ghost towns” of Hillsboro and Kingston – was super-friendly in a genuine way, not a we-depend-on-tourism sort of way. We learned all sorts of things about the local history and about what it’s like to live there. The people we met and those conversations were the best part of the trip.

So I close my eyes gently and remember my vacation.

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^{*The rooms at Blackstone are themed – we stayed in the I Dream of Jeannie Room, which was decorated in a lightly Moorish style with framed photos of Barbara Eden and her bottle. It was just enough without feeling like you were in the Poconos or something, although the room had no towel bars or place to store your clothes, which was odd, but I guess most people don’t stay long enough to unpack and the towels dried fast enough on the patio in the New Mexico sun, even in early April.}