This morning it was 5:30 when I woke up. It was cold, only 57˚. The dog and Fern were huddled beside me. I decided to get out of bed, grab a cup of coffee and read the papers. By the time I had finished reading, it was time to get dressed and meet friends for breakfast. We met at a cafe by the water, an outside restaurant, and it was really cold. The nautical flags were flapping on the breeze, and I could hear the clink of their grommets hitting the pole. That cold wind changed our minds so we opted to find an inside restaurant. Breakfast was delicious.

Tonight is the first play of the season at the Cape Playhouse, a summer theater since 1927. I’ve had season tickets for decades. I remember when I first started going people dressed up for the theater. Men wore suits and ties and women wore dresses. The few tourists looked uneasy and out of place in shorts and t-shirts. Well-known TV and movie stars were in the plays, and we saw a new play every week. Over the years much has changed. Dress is now haphazard, the plays change every two weeks, and the stars are mostly from Broadway, and I really don’t know many. That, however, hasn’t changed the quality of the plays. Tonight is Last of the Red Hot Lovers, and it got wonderful reviews. I always think of the first play as the start of summer.

Rituals change the seasons for me. The first play is the start of summer. The first tree with   its leaves changing color is fall. Thanksgiving is fall’s last hurrah. Winter begins with frost and light snow early in December. It seems to last the longest of any season. Even when the days start to get warmer, the nights and mornings stay cold. Baseball, the game of summer, is played in temperatures befitting winter. Watching the game on television is far better than freezing in a stadium. When a game is played on a warm Sunday afternoon and the crowd is in short sleeve shirts, I’ll start to believe in summer.