I was told before first light in the dark of dog-walking time that it promised to be a gem of a day. Later the same day, I flagrantly stole that turn of phrase to use on a guy making a donation to the Habitat ReStore, pronouncing that “it promised to be a gem of a day.” He instantly corrected me by saying: “Every day is a gem.” Blushingly, I nodded in admiration. Certainly, days are what we make of them.

It is easier to see the gems all around us in May. “Massachusetts is a beauty in the spring,” marveled playwright Arthur Miller’s Puritan farmer, John Proctor. Crashing through the ages, we hear a voice saying: “If you think that’s wonderful, you ought to see Maine!”

The days are filled with gems with many facets. One reflection in this gem of today is the vegetation as it unfurls. The plants themselves, the leaves and certainly the flowers start tiny and wrinkled, but within a heartbeat they seem, almost overnight, to unfurl into their identifiable mature color and size. I’d think that to avoid direct light, it would be wise to stay folded up, but instead the leaves unfold and will themselves to catch the sun. They seem to stretch and say, “Bring it on.”

A second, more primary, element affecting all multiple reflections is the angle of the sun. It shifts in spring, and it seems as though it angles into windows earlier and stays later. (OK, maybe that is merely because of daylight saving time.)

It is arguably more direct, though, in relationship to the Earth. That’s the way it feels, too. It is as if the Earth takes a bow to the sun, and then the sun causes all of the aforesaid unfurling to happen. The inverse relationship of sun to Earth as the sun bows or tilts toward it is filled with mystical wonder and beauty. To pin everything on the sun isn’t quite accurate.

We know that it rains. We complain about it. We particularly complain if it rains on the weekend. We try to remember that “spring showers bring May flowers” and to not get discouraged. It does seems to rain more often than it bursts full into sunshine.

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The May flowers have finally arrived. And the green almost seems like an early hint of what will be emerald later, in full summer. It does glisten and shine, and we’d expect nothing less of a gem.

It seems like the breeze is the breath that goes just before giving the gem a polish to make it shine. March winds have turned to breezes, and wind has changed to a caress. (Oh, we complain when it still seems cold, of course.)

Like Tiffany’s window, the gems all around us are spilling into our eyes and making us smile, because we’re getting each new gem, having paid a winter’s worth of prices.

 


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