Reading on the beach

Our snow had started to melt. Temperatures were in the thirties. Huge chunks of snow-covered ice slid off our metal roof. The sound of it is always startling. Several new snowfalls have been heavy, wet, spring snows. But this week we've fallen back towards winter again. Our nights are below zero and our days can't quite make it to twenty degrees. Yesterday we had several snow showers. The big flakes drifted down dry and light like winter snow. And yet I know that winter will have to give up soon. The sun is higher and much stronger. The light is different and lasts longer. The icicles drip and grow longer and longer even on the cold days. I've been reading a book about Shakespeare while I'm sitting here in front of our big windows waiting for spring. Yesterday I came to a chapter about "The Merchant of Venice." Twenty five years ago, I took a University of Wisconsin course by mail on Shakespeare's plays. "The Merchant of Venice" came up as an assignment just as our family was ready to leave for vacation. We had a favorite campsite at a small lake in northern Wisconsin. We weren't a family who went camping just for its own sake. Usually we were on our way to somewhere, camping in a new place each night. But this particular campsite must have had happy memories attached to it. I remember seeking it out, returning to it several years in a row. I've read so many books in my sixty five years. I'm lucky if I can remember the plot and the characters. Seldom do I know where I did the reading. But any thought of "The Merchant of Venice" brings back the short, shady walk to the beach, the warm sand, the sun on my shoulders, my children near-by.