Lessons From Rainbow Chard: Finding Wonder in Everyday Moments
Have you ever stopped to marvel at how truly wondrous our planet is? Just the other day, I found myself mesmerized by Rainbow Chard. It had been a long and full week in the city and we were on our way back to the lake house. We were hungry and almost stopped in the village which we had discovered on an anniversary dinner more than five years ago now. The flags of our favorite French bistros waved ouvert as we passed by, tempting us to slow down and raise a glass with the locals who we could see through the windows sipping wine from nearby vineyards.
There are three bistros in the village, each with a distinctive charm, and we have frequented all of them enough to come to know the owners, each with their own unique flavor. On Mondays, all but one of the three stayed open until 6 pm and we we had made a weekly habit of finishing our Mondays with Amelie, who always greeted us with a smile and was happy to make us our usual falafel on salad with the local light beer, which was a framboise. Most of the time we were the only ones there and we enjoyed our regular haunt and the familiarity we could count on. The other two were on opposite sides of the street from one another, both overlooking the beautiful river that ran through the village all the way from our cottage lake. The smaller, fancier one was run by a young couple. She was the face of the establishment and always greeted us with warmth and calm. She exuded pride every time she read us the daily menu. It had been created by her husband, who was the chef who prepared bespoke meals inspired by the freshest ingredients in the region, and the presentation was always extraordinary, a true artistic experience. When we would go there, I would recognize and relate to that feeling, to her creative entrepreneurship, not to mention collaborating with her husband as I did with mine. He was the music to my dance for most of our lives.
As tempted as we were, that day, we drove straight past instead, eager to arrive at our little apple, the name name of our lake house which, since the pandemic, had come to replace the Big Apple where we had devoted so much of our time. Endless blocks of skyscrapers had been replaced by rows and rows of vineyards and apple orchards. The mighty Hudson River substituted now by our little Lac Selby. Although I felt sleepy and wasn’t exactly in the mood to cook, let alone wash vegetables, I remembered that we had picked up some rainbow chard at the farmer’s market and thought that we should probably eat it. I took it from the paper bag and diligently began rinsing each leaf from any traces of dirt, my mind wandering, you know, I always talk about the rich possibilities that lay in even the most mundane of activities.
And that evening, happy to be home but eager to get the work of eating done, one of those magical moments overcame me. I turned away from the sink and began to lay out the pieces of chard, one by one, before I chopped it, and right before my eyes a magical rainbow forest appeared. I was overcome with the joy and beauty of these simple leaves as they lay side by side on my cutting board. The orange, red and gold veins of their leaves stretched like branches of trees, their wet, luscious green crowns glistening. How filled with awe the world we live in.
I thought how easy it is to take it for granted. Dinner would have been fine whether we stopped in the village that night or ate at home. But that moment, man, have you ever stopped to marvel at how truly wondrous our planet is? The lesson I learned from my rainbow chart that night was to remember that there are infinite amount of opportunities to experience the wonder of it all.
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