Yesterday was the last day of our Christmas vacation, and there was really only one order of business for the day – DO NOTHING. Actually, that’s not quite correct. We got ourselves to church in the morning and we also took our friend Jamie Wilson out to lunch – but otherwise we were bound and determined to accomplish nothing except utter relaxation, since we have actually managed to have precious little of that over this vacation. We’ve had it here and there, but there were only a couple of days when we didn’t have to set the alarm – and not a single day when the calendar was completely empty, except for those days when the calendar got emptied against our will by the flu / food poisoning / or whatever bug it is that lowered the boom on us so rudely. And yesterday wasn’t a completely empty day either but close enough for our purposes. We made it a day to stick close to home and just enjoy each other. . . and I don’t think anything short of an electrical fire would have chased us out of the house once we had settled in. We just wanted to be here, doing nothing. Actually, Kathy is the one who wanted that while my instinct, of course, was for us to run off to a movie or run out for some shopping. . . but once we were sitting in the family room with the fireplace going, just sitting, her plan seemed so wise and mine seemed so foolish.
And then a task presented itself which could not be ignored – and it presented itself in the form of a smiling snowman in a 500-piece puzzle which Kathy bought as a Christmas gift – probably as one of those emergency gifts to grab when you suddenly find that you need one more gift for someone for some reason – but when no such need arose, this puzzle became a little project of our own instead in the days right after Christmas. Kathy and I are not big puzzle people, and we’re pretty certain that we haven’t so much as touched a puzzle since we lived on Carmel Avenue, which means it has been at least eight years! We do remember that previous puzzle pretty vividly because we did it during a winter when Racine was being socked by especially horrible weather (bad enough to necessitate the cancellation of Sunday morning church at one point) – which was also when Kathy’s mom was suffering some health crisis that landed her in the hospital. In the midst of all that, there must have been something warmly reassuring about sitting down together and entertaining ourselves with something as old-fashioned and low-tech as a puzzle. And the puzzle itself was some sort of Grandma Moses-type picture of a small town in the autumn – which only deepened the sense of time-worn well-being that enveloped us as we put it together. And when we finally finished it, we liked it so much that we talked about keeping it and framing it, although I’m pretty sure we never quite managed to do it.
This vacation we found ourselves in the puzzle- assembling business once again. Actually, it was more Kathy’s undertaking because I just don’t take very well to being quite that tied down to a task that demands such focus and such stillness. But every so often I would find myself drawn over to the card table I had brought up from the basement, and more than once I pitched in with great gusto. And in what amounts to some sort of metaphor for married life, I can think of several instances when I happened to stop by just as Kathy was growing frustrated – or maybe just as her eyeballs were about to pop out of her head – and was able to lend a well-timed helping hand.
We worked the puzzle as most people do – starting with the outer border – then the clearest elements of the picture like the snowman’s scarf and mitten – followed by the scattering of stars – and of course the big word “Believe” in the lower right hand corner. At one point, we realized we were missing one piece in the middle of the mitten, and after all we had already done, this seemed like a cruel joke indeed. But then I discovered the missing piece underneath our sofa and life looked good again! But eventually we were left with nothing left but blank background, and it suddenly seemed like we were going to be working on this puzzle for the rest of our natural lives. We tried separating all the blank pieces according to white, beige, or some combination of the two – but after awhile they started to all look the same – the same color, the same shape, the same everything. But thank goodness for Jamie, when he came by for lunch. Something about a new pair of eyes made all of the difference in the world, and just getting us past our impasse by three or four pieces made all of the difference in the world. And little by little by little, the gaps grew smaller and smaller – and our pace quickened – until at last Kathy was sitting there with one last piece to go . . . and there I was, of course, with camera in hand, ready to document the moment as though she were Sir Edmund Hillary, about to stand atop the summit of Mt. Everest. It’s funny how something that in a sense shouldn’t matter at all and does nothing for the well-being of the world can feel so incredibly significant and meaningful. This really did. And I won’t be surprised if we wait another eight years to do our next puzzle- but on the other hand, this may become a little more frequent diversion for us. It gets us away from the laptop – away from the TV – away from the phone – away from the rest of the world. And when you think about what the world looks like right now, it’s little wonder that this feels as good as it does.
By the way, when in the world – and where in the world – were puzzles first invented? I have not the slightest idea, but my hat goes off to whoever first dreamt up the notion of splitting up an image into many pieces that it might be reconstructed for the sheer fun of it. And in this world of the internet and PlayStation and Wii and Blue Ray disks, three cheers for that primitive source of the pleasure known as the picture puzzle for the way it still entertains us even as it taunts us. . . and for the unassuming way in which it manages to slow us down and quiet us down like very few things can anymore.
pictured at the top and below: my wife just as the final piece is about to be placed.
