On Puzzles

 

My intention with this post, started months ago, was to talk about my love/hate relationship with puzzles. I’m not big into puzzles. Maybe it’s because I didn’t do a lot of them as a child. Yes, we had jigsaw puzzles, but all those five hundred piece puzzles I got as birthday presents? – never did them. I was thinking about why and it’s quite simple, really. The only table surface large enough, our dining room table – which was really a door braced to the wall – was needed for more practical purposes such as eating and mixing up big batches of cookie dough. We could have rigged up some sort of table in the living room, next to the red, Dodge-van “couches”, but those little pieces would have been swallowed up quickly in the crushed rock floor. So maybe I just never got into it, and that’s why I’m not big on building puzzles now. Or maybe it’s because I don’t feel like I have time to sit and stare at similarly coloured little pieces of cardboard until I think I’m going to go crazy. Or maybe….. maybe it’s because once I start I’m so obsessive compulsive that I can’t stop until it’s done, and that’s what makes me crazy. Especially if anyone mentions it being “impossible” to finish in a certain amount of time. And then I fall asleep with green turf, criss-crossing golf clubs, golf balls, and edgeless puzzles floating on the edge of my consciousness.

On the other hand, my boys love puzzles. And they make good use of those five hundred piecers that I never did. There are almost always at least three puzzles on the go, at various stages, in various places in the house. Ben is an amazing puzzle builder. He can whip up a sixty piece puzzle in no-time. It’s incredible, really. Occasionally, the big boys plead with me to help on one of the larger puzzles. I usually make up some excuse, but sometimes I force myself to give in. And you know what? I’m getting better at working on it for a little while, enjoying the chatter, and then walking away – puzzle incomplete. And do you know what else? I could even say that I enjoy it!