Journey: The Gold Leaf of Gratitude

It’s a beautiful September in Pennsylvania. The days are still warm, but the nights are considerably cooler. The trees are turning leaves earlier than usual this year. Our street has honey locusts on both sides–bad news in the spring for allergies–but in the fall, it creates the most beautiful golden ark over the street.

Many things feel shockingly normal these days. Being in a classroom is normal. Meeting a friend for dinner is normal. My husband and I checking out a new restaurant in town is normal. Yet, nothing is going back. My dad is still awaiting test results and hasn’t started his treatment. I’m scheduling things while fully aware that anything can change at any moment. The last year and a half presented so many twists and turns, it’s hard to trust that a sudden feeling of peace would last.

I was talking to a close friend who is much better at flowing through life than me. I asked her how she does it. She thought for a moment and brought up driving in a dense fog. You are in the car; the visibility is limited and there is no turning back. You don’t know when the fog will subside. You have your headlights and high beams, that’s it. All you can do is drive slowly and carefully. I loved that metaphor and continued with it. We live in a valley surrounded by many mountain roads. They have one lane in each direction. In the fog, you can’t really stop on the side of the road because you can’t see if there is space to stop. It can be in the middle of a forest or on a cliff. And if you feel you can’t do it anymore, you can’t just stop and get out—you may be hit by another car that won’t see you and regardless, there is nowhere to go. As I later shared this with a couple of people, I realized it wasn’t a metaphor or hyperbole. That was a very accurate description of my life at the moment, as well as of quite a few people I know. Many of us are driving in a heavy fog.

Boston is one of my favorite cities in the world and Newbury Street is one of my favorites in it. Many years ago, I walked into a private gallery there, Galerie D’Orsay. Don’t think it has any direct connection to the museum in Paris. The works by Bruno Zupan captured my attention. He’s a contemporary artist, born in Slovenia, in his 80s now, one of the few living impressionists. I returned to this gallery on every visit to the city, and I also saw his works in another private gallery in San Francisco. I love his views of Boston, Paris and Venice, as well as landscapes and seascapes. I also love his paintings of trees and flowers, including bouquets in vases. He describes his work as a pursuit of light, quite literally. Many of his paintings start on a gold leaf, so there is the golden light peeking through other colors in each piece. I feel that my emotions these days, as various and varying as they are, ranging from joy to sadness, from inspiration to grief, from hope to fear, are different colors on the golden canvas of gratitude. And I keep driving.