Like an early spring~

I woke this morning with a reminder of the weekend. No, not a hangover-- a brightened spirit.

I spent the weekend "down the Cape" with two teacher friends.

It's the tail end of the off-season on The Cape: the quiet time prior to the surge of tourists and fair-weather residents who'll stream across the Cape Cod Canal after Memorial Day.

The three of us met on Saturday at Mashpee Commons, a shopping center with shops named, among other things: Illusions, Irresistibles, and Quintessentials.

It's well known among my friends that I'm not the quintessential shopper. They suffer no illusions that I will unearth my deeply buried shopper persona on these getaways, which always involve a trip to some irresistible store or other. We synchronize watches, set a meet-up time. They shop, and I wander in and out of stores to eventually settle in a bookstore until time's up. I have no problem with that.

Saturday, however, torrents of wind-whipped rain soaked us to the skin before the first shopping hour was up. We did the round robin cell phone thing and headed back to the cottage to read . . . and nap.

Later we went to dinner early enough to have drinks and an appetizer at the bar before our reservation time. Then dinner, dessert-- creme brulee-- and back to lounge on the couch and talk politics before bed.

In the night the clouds ran dry. Sunday was sunny, cold and windy. We woke to our own internal clocks, and started the day in our own way, mine being a walk with my camera along the beach at the end of the lane.

Then after a late breakfast and a scenic drive, we split to return to our real lives: one to continue the aborted shopping spree, one to the gym, and me to another beach for a long walk into the wind which gusted forty miles an hour.

Today, at school, we met before the kids arrived, and talked about how much fun we had, how tired we are, and how we'll do it again for sure.

It's amazing what a change of place-- and pace-- can do for the winter weary spirit. But more than that, it's the friendship that refreshes and warms the heart, that make the tail end of winter seem like an early spring.
~~~~~
The time must come when this coast will be a place of resort for those New-Englanders who really wish to visit the seaside.~Henry David Thoreau