Puzzle

            A friend texted us recently to apologize for not getting back to us sooner, explaining that she has been very busy at work.

            “I’ve been busy, too,” I told her, “working on a jigsaw puzzle.”

            Why work on a jigsaw puzzle? Good question, I suppose, especially when I see Kim so busy doing real work – cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc. Yes, I do some real work, too, most of it involving snow, but my jigsaw puzzle contribution to our functioning home carries with it a seasoning of guilt. I’ve told Kim several times that one thing I really enjoy is being useful. This puzzle is not that one thing.

            Kim has been great about it – not giving me any static about wasting my time. Occasionally she will walk by the puzzle and put in a couple of pieces. (As it turns out, all colors of blue are not the same, and dark blue is not the same color as black.) Keep in mind—to give you a feel for the speed at which I operate—that I’ve been “working” on this puzzle for about a month. Kim has also offered, several times, to help by putting the unfinished puzzle back in the box.

            I am proud to say that I put together the entire outside border, and I ended up with two extra pieces with straight sides. 

            What causes puzzle-pleasure? It may be a deep enjoyment of creating order. The world seems to be a mess, a jumble of pieces, in so many ways: the Middle East, the planet’s health, domestic politics, just to mention a few. There is not a lot I can do, in the British phrase, to “sort things out” in those areas. But I can do that with my puzzle pieces sprawled on the table. Kim suggests that I can also create order by cleaning up the top of my desk.

            At least, I think I can create order out of my puzzle pieces. My progress, already slow, is getting slower, and I do have to find a place for those straight-edged pieces. Pretty much all that remains are about a hundred nearly identical black pieces. I’ve started to think of excuses: I bought the puzzle used, and maybe somebody deliberately messed with the pieces, and that’s why I’m stuck.

            Meanwhile, here’s a poem I wrote some years ago after a successful puzzle experience:

  Taking the puzzle apart

begins with a corner piece.  It

sticks.  I work it loose, place

it in the box.  Next I grab

a section where trees meet sky.

Pieces lift in an elastic mat.

I snap my wrist to separate

a hunk, then hold it over the box

as I gently work the fabric

apart and drop each piece back

into the box.  Doing this,

I think back to the work

I set aside to lock each

piece where it goes, music

I heard, the book that stopped

when I walked to the table,

sat, found the spot where peaks

edge the sky, or where the snow

on the mountains streaks just

so.  I learned the different

greens of trees left and right,

but now all pieces

                                       plop,

some gray backs up, down

in a heap back in the box.

Sky, trees, mountains, shrubs,

thistle, daffodils all disappear,

faster piece by piece.  It feels

good to get down to the maple

table, clean except for blue,

green and brown dust.  A sponge

takes that away.  I place the box

back on a shelf, find a sky piece,

slip it beneath the lid.

THIS JUST IN:

            After realizing that a number of pieces were missing, we scrapped the puzzle and dumped the pieces back in the box, headed for recycling. It feels really, really good having done this – another way to bring order to my world. Kim, as usual, was right.