Puzzles

Our guests this weekend, Kurt
and Laura, helped us assemble
a nice autumn puzzle.

I remember working puzzles when I was 3. There was this puzzle of Mickey Mouse, that probably had about 50 pieces. Mickey was swinging a bat at a baseball game I believe; I don't remember exactly. But I do remember the sky was a gradient of color, starting with navy blue at the top, turning to a dusky green at the bottom. My mom was always amazed because, whereas other kids were doing 10 piece wooden puzzles, I was doing jigsaw puzzles. I guess it's no surprise I ended up a computer programmer, if I liked solving puzzles that early on. But I don't feel like I can take any special credit for that; I was born into a puzzle-working family.

Every holiday our family pulls out a puzzle. Our house growing up (where my mom still lives), has a great big dining room table, which sits right under a bright chandelier... the best lighting for working a puzzle. We've spent many a night in pleasant conversation with guests, or else staying up way too late at night, caught up in the obsession of, "Just one more piece!" Whenever it was time to eat, we'd simply cover up the puzzle with a table cloth and eat on top of it; you'd never know it was there. When the puzzle was finished, we scoffed at those kits where you could glue the puzzle to some piece of cardboard to hang it. Most puzzles are strong enough to stay together by themselves, so we'd just thumb-tack the puzzle to the wall to hang it. (The beauty is, we could alway put the puzzle back in the box and work it again some other time.) Our most ambitious puzzle ever was an 8,000 piece puzzle of the painting by Raphael that's in the Vatican, called, "The School of Athens." We didn't think it would ever get finished.

Although my mom liked the ambience of being around us kids when we worked on a puzzle, she was never much of a puzzle-worker herself. She would moan the fact that she didn't seem to be able to fit pieces together very well. One holiday, about 5 years ago, I was complimenting my brother on his sorting ability. I said, "I'm really good at fitting pieces together, but I don't have the patience for sorting. I'm so glad you're doing that." My mom said she would offer to sort. It turns out Mom is a very gifted sorter. In fact, she seemed to have found a calling in life. I remember her triumphantly declaring one day, "I've always been a sorter at heart! I love to do laundry because I like to sort the clothes, and when I diagnose my patients, what I'm doing is sorting them into diagnostic classifications." I love my mom.