And When You Find Yourself in the Place Just Right

There is something indescribable about a birch tree. Perhaps it is the sheer whiteness of its bark, the way it peels and begs to be written upon or saved. Perhaps it is the way its leaves shimmer like so many silver coins when caught in the breeze. I sat today, for a moment, on our deck. The children played inside, their laughter drifting out through the open screened door. I sat and gazed out, first at the hills just coming into the full lushness of summer, the golds and yellows and browns giving way to a palette rich with green. But what caught my eye today was the old birch off to the side. It typically goes overlooked, what with the backdrop of rolling hills begging to be admired. The pure blue sky, the late afternoon sun, something drew my eye to that birch. I admired for the first time the individual dances of its leaves, each its own entity catching the light this way and that, swaying in the breeze. Not so with the maples. Their leaves, while beautiful, meld to form the greater whole. The gypsy birch leaves shimmy and turn, each caught in its own rhythm, the tinkling of coins from a belly dancer's scarf. A triad of leaves fell from the top, caught the breeze and twirled downward away from the tree, across the old fence and landed just shy of the herb garden. Beautiful. I imagined strolling down to find it, pressing it in a book, saved away for some later day, some later year when I would stumble across it, dry and brittle, wedged between a poem by Whitman and an essay by Thoreau. I would lift it out carefully, its fragile skeleton giving way, a tiny piece still wedged in the binding of the book. At first, it would mean nothing. What was it? Why did I save it? And then memory would flood my mind... the giggles floating out from the living room, the spring sun in my face, the silvery shimmer against a crystal sky. That moment when everything was just right.