For a time when I was a kid, we lived in a log cabin. My favorite part was our backyard, a field of shaggy wild bushes, sunflowers and dandelions. In the distance, pine trees and oaks stretched toward puffy clouds and blue sky. Common reed plants edged the boundary of our lawn and the wilderness. Most days, I would play at that boundary between society and wilderness collecting grass stains and bee stings. There, I ate wild raspberries, and watched the clouds turn to rain. When I was tired, I’d come back inside and lie on the couch in the living room where there was a painting on the wall. The painting looked just like our backyard, so I assumed my parents’ friends had created it — just for us. “What a nice friend,” I thought as I counted the number of strokes in the grass and traced the swirls in the clouds.
Some days I marveled at the fluidity of the strokes and the swirls. On others, I would be annoyed by a portion of the landscape that was painted slightly darker than the rest. But on most days, I loved the painting. Even when we moved away from the log cabin, I’d look at the swirls and long for the countryside.
As an adult, I now live in Silicon Valley with self-driving taxis on streets lined with our neighbors’ SUVs. The log cabin had become a distant memory when one night, I flipped through photos of a Van Gogh exhibition. Then, I stopped at a long forgotten image. I counted the strokes in the grass. Traced the swirls in the cloud and I was reminded of our slice of countryside. Turns out, our painting was actually a copy of Van Gogh’s work, “A Wheatfield With Cypresses.”
On a whim, I purchased a copy of my own, and now, it’s set above my fireplace in my house, reminding me of the log cabin, the clouds, the sweet raspberries, and when I once thought Van Gogh was our family friend.