Time was about to change from Central to Mountain, and we, along with our GPS, were hovering somewhere in between.  It was 2:08pm. We had 58 miles to go to our next destination, and were expected to arrive at 2:07pm. Our Toyota had turned into a Time Machine. 

It was the smallest of towns. They didn’t have a Main Street, but they had a loop. The first directional sign said simply, Van Gogh. We looked at each other. It was spelled the same, but certainly they couldn’t have one. And we had been fooled once before — in Mississippi they have an O’Keefe Art Museum. Excited I didn’t notice the missing “f” as Georgia O’Keeffe spelled it. No, it was not Georgia, but the lesser known Jerry. 

Not wanting to be Jerried again, we followed the sign with low expectations. Looking around, Dominique said, “Well, where is it????”  Looking up I said, “Oh there it is,” pointing to the massive replica of Sunflowers on an 80 foot steel easel. Of course it wasn’t an actual Van Gogh, but it was real in the sense that it was actually there, all 40,000 pounds of it. 

Now some may have been disappointed. And having stood in front of his paintings at face level, marveling, you’d think I’d be one of them. But I wasn’t disappointed. I chose to think that maybe our Toyota really was a Time Machine, and here we stood, back in time. And loving Van Gogh as I do, this scale felt just about right.

I suppose everything is how we choose to see it. And sometimes, you just have to look up.