We were driving along an interstate highway on a February day, just the two of us. I have no recollection of where we were headed or whether it was sunny or overcast, but I remember being grateful for the heater that kept the chill away from his bones. He felt the cold more keenly than I did, so I purposely set it warmer than I would have liked. I drove no faster than the speed limit and kept to the right lane, passing cars sparingly and using my blinker as I had been taught. I gently pointed out each approaching rest stop in case he hadn’t noticed the road signs–he often needed to stop a while to stretch his legs. Our trip was a leisurely, comfortable one with conversation that flowed around moments of intermittent silence–the kinds of pauses whose durations are not discernable between two people who are at ease with one another.

I remember making a mental note of how bleak the landscape seemed as we passed mile after mile of leafless tree limbs, skeletal foliage, and ice-encrusted rocks.  It was at that exact moment he said it:  “Who would have thought there could be so many shades of brown?”

His casual observation caught me by surprise.  He could not have known what I had been thinking just a moment before, and the very coincidence of it seemed like an unintended rebuke for allowing myself to sink into negative space.  His comment tugged at my better nature. I was seeing “bleakness” while he was marveling at the “many shades of brown.”  He had chosen to share this with me at exactly the moment that I could see nothing but lifelessness.  Could this be an example of the Universe using a serendipitous collision of two mindsets to teach me a lesson?

The lesson was not lost on me.  Within an instant, the snowless winterscape became a panoply of possibility.  Different shades of brown emerged and moments later, a subtler assortment of browns made themselves known to me–each vibrant in its own right, worthy of being given its own name and place in Nature’s crayon box.

Grey-brown tree limbs reached up to finger the wind as green-brown grass lay flattened, resting.  Tanned-brown cattail heads stood stalwart against an onslaught of cold.  Purple-brown berry vines bowed in gentle tangles of repose against a millennian backdrop of black-brown rock.   Russet-brown leaves huddled along the roadside edges, chasing the cars as they passed.  What had seemed lifeless and bleak just moments before became fully alive and transformed by a change of mindset and a willingness to see beyond the surface.

I’ve thought about all the ways my father transformed my life without even knowing he had done so.  I never shared with him how his off-hand comment about “the many shades of brown” in winter affected me.  That one moment in time tripped a reset button in my mind and heart, opening my eyes to a world of beauty which had always been there.  It was hidden in plain sight along the interstate, waiting for me to be ready to see it one cold winter day.