PUZZLEMENT
When I was a boy
World was better spot.
What was so was so,
What was not was not.
Now I am a man;
World have changed a lot.
Some things nearly so,
Others nearly not.
There are times I almost think
I am not sure of what I absolutely know.
Very often find confusion
In conclusion I concluded long ago
In my head are many facts
That, as a student, I have studied to procure,
In my head are many facts..
Of which I wish I was more certain I was sure!
Is a puzzlement . . .
ROGERS AND HAMMERSTEIN (The King and I)
I love puzzles. I love puzzles as much as I love books, chocolate and wine. I was born to do puzzles. It was my destiny. If you sit me down in front of a puzzle in the afternoon you will have to drag me away at the end of the night. There is very little that can brighten my day as much as sitting at a puzzle for a good 4-5 hours. I guess the only thing that might brighten my day even more is sitting at a puzzle, drinking wine, eating chocolate and listening to an audiobook.
The beginning of a puzzle is the best. Everything about it. I slowly lift the lid and that new puzzle smell flows out. It’s a new challenge and a mystery. Did I choose wisely? Will it be good times or a wretched slog? (I enjoy both) Which section will pop into place with little effort on my part and which section will have me pulling out my hair? (although I can probably guess)
I always start with the edges, something to contain the picture. When I work with a non puzzler and we dump out the pieces it doesn’t even occur to them to start with the edges. They just start looking at the pieces and trying to put the puzzle together with no edges in place. I am mortified. I look at them like they have just arrived from another planet. How can you even begin to do a puzzle without edges I ask. They look silently back at me - puzzled.
The first thing I do is dump all the pieces out on the table. My favorite are 1000 piece puzzles. Enough pieces to be a challenge and fit on my puzzle table but not enough to be so frustrating that I give up. In all of the puzzles I have ever done I have only left one unfinished - a real failure, very traumatic - someday I will pull it out and try again - or not - because I think I was smart enough to give it away.
Next I start the sorting process. This is a very long and arduous process. I sort through the pieces one by one not only to set aside the edges but to sort them by the main color in the piece and perhaps also to sort through my life. Cheaper and less painful than an hour appointment at the therapist’s office. I have cookie pans as trays. And throw the pieces into one pan or the other based on their color. All of the edges of course go to the middle of the table.
Once the pieces are all sorted which hopefully only took one sitting I start putting the edges together. Inevitably I am missing at least one edge piece that I somehow missed when I sorted. At every puzzle start I give myself the challenge of finding every edge the first time sorting through the pieces but in all my years of puzzling I have yet to do it. I am always going through the pieces once more to find that one edge that slipped through my fingers.
Every once in awhile my edges don’t match up. I have all of the pieces and they are all fitting together but they aren’t. I know from experience that this can only mean one thing. There is a piece that fits in two different places and it is currently in the wrong place.
Once the framework of the puzzle is intact I can begin the inside. Ah, where to start? Usually someplace distinct like a house or an animal or a face. Something that will come together easily and give me a center from which to grow the rest of my puzzle. I never start with the sky or any kind of body of water. It has to be something easier, something to give me a fast, confidence-building start. As in most aspects of my life I need that reassurance that I will succeed.
As my puzzle grows I get to know the puzzle. This is something that non puzzlers do not understand. There are pieces in the puzzle that I have been looking for that I have been unable to find. Sometimes when I am looking for another piece I see it, the piece I was looking for earlier. I pick it up and pop it in and that’s just about the time someone walks up and says how do you do that? Just pick up a piece and know where it goes? Well, I don’t. I have been hovering over this puzzle for days now and I know it well. I am never looking for just one piece. I am keeping my eye out for all of those other pieces I looked for but couldn’t find and those are the ones I am finding while looking for a new piece. So take heed non puzzler, it is not that you aren’t good at puzzles as you often tell me, it is that you have not taken the time to acquaint yourself with said puzzle. If you spent as many hours as I doing puzzles, trust me, you would be good at puzzles.
Some evenings one of my sons will sit down with me at the puzzle and join in. It’s nice, sitting at a puzzle together chatting. One of the things I have learned raising four boys is that boys and men talk better when you are not sitting face to face. They prefer to be doing something while they talk. So it is during these times that I have some of my best chats with my boys.
As you work on the puzzle it is usually slow but consistent going. Some evenings you will fly through the pieces getting 20 or 30 in a couple of hours. Other nights you will look and look and look and only get 10-15 pieces. Some evenings I am working for a couple of hours on the puzzle with my eye on the clock because it is getting late and I have to work the next day. I can barely pull myself away but finally admonish myself for staying up so late and get up. If you watch puzzlers get up from working on their puzzles you will notice that their eyes don’t leave the puzzle. We are looking for that one more piece we can put in before we leave the table. As I stand I see the puzzle and the pieces at a different perspective and all of a sudden I can put in three, four, five more pieces. Sometimes they are popping in so fast that I have to sit down again and finish the run thus making my bedtime even later.
Slowly but surely the puzzle morphs, it grows, it changes and I fall in love with it. The colors or the scene or the memories it provokes. There is a reason I chose that puzzle and when I work at it one piece at a time that reason presents itself. Sometimes I find myself humming, sometimes I have the TV on in the background, sometimes I am very quiet and the house is very quiet. Sometimes I have a glass of wine. Once I smoked some pot but that didn’t go well.
Then when I get to within range of the end of the puzzle I have a decision to make. I have to look at the number of pieces and decide if I should stay up and finish it. Hard not to but can I finish it without going too late because once I take the plunge I can not turn back. I can not get down to 30 pieces and then go to bed even if it does get to 11 or 12 o’clock and I really should go to bed because I have to work tomorrow.
Finally it is the last 20-30 pieces and they are just popping in now. One right after the other. And that’s when everyone wants to join in. It reminds me of the Little Red Hen story where Mama Hen asks all the other animals if they want to help plant, water, harvest and grind the wheat and no one wants to help. But once the wheat is turned into bread everyone is interested again. That’s how it is with puzzles. People will come and go and watch me at work and not join in but get down to those last 20-30 pieces and everyone’s hands go into play. It used to bother me but now I just laugh, sit back and watch them go.
And that final piece, they leave that one for me. Once that final piece is in I stretch my hands as wide open as they will go and slide them across the finished puzzle, feeling the smoothness and completion. And I sigh. Ahhhhhhhhhhh. I show it to whoever happens to be around. They ooh and aah and then I break it apart and pack it away.
Because like many things in life it isn’t the finished product it’s the journey.