It’s been…maddening. I started a jigsaw puzzle shortly before Christmas, and I just put the final piece in place last week. At least that’s what I tell myself.
I thought it would be FUN. Can you imagine? The picture looked fun enough–a collection of brightly decorated holiday cookies with frosting and sprinkles and little candy decorations. There were snowflakes and stockings and gingerbread men, and they were all arranged on a festive red plate. The puzzle was circular, as in it had no corner pieces. If I had been thinking, I would have taken one look at all of those semi-identical curves and thrown the whole mess back in the box.
But no. I trudged forward, one infuriating piece at a time. I could have quit anywhere along the journey. I know that. But there was something a bit frightening about admitting defeat to a hunk of cardboard.
I started off just fine. The puzzle was a hobby, a diversion. I would walk through the dining room and stop for a minute to see if I could find homes for a piece or two. I’d look while the teakettle came to a boil. I’d look while the dryer finished its spin. But soon, five minutes became 50 and the once clean, fluffy shirts would have to be spun and fluffed all over again.
Having been witness to my obsessions for these many years, my husband Harold tried to intervene. When things got too quiet, he would holler out, “Are you puzzling?” And I would hurry away from the table and say, “No.” Complete denial.
Then one night (morning?) Harold came padding bleary-eyed into the dining room at 3 a.m. and found me hunched over the table in my bathrobe. “But I’m getting so close!” I protested. And I was. All I had left were the snowmen. There were three of them, already outlined, just requiring their snowy innards. The thing that had me flummoxed was that each snowman was a slightly different shade of eggshell/ecru/cream. A puzzle piece would physically fit next to one of the red candy buttons, but it wouldn’t be the right off-white tone. It was horrible, like when I try to match up all the socks in the laundry by gradient stages of wear.
I put the pieces in. I took them out. I adjusted the overhead lamp, but it just wasn’t coming together. And the pressure was mounting. It would soon be Easter and, even if it was cardboard, a giant plate of cookies on the dining room table was not going to help me fight off my gluttonous tendencies during Lent.
White piece in. White piece out. Then, during one last late night puzzling session, I declared it a “no mas” endeavor. I crammed the last piece into place, switched off the light and went to bed. Enough.
I left the close-enough puzzle on the table for three more days, and then I did what I knew I’d have to do all along. I took it apart and loaded all of the pieces back into the box.
The question is…now what? Let the cardboard cookie plate jeer at me from the game shelf? I don’t think so. Give the puzzle away? To whom? Friends don’t let friends wrestle for months with multi-hued snowmen. It’s a moral/morale dilemma.
For now, I have exiled the puzzle to live out its days with all of the other monsters…in my closet, but last night I swore I could hear the beast whispering…You didn’t really finish, you know. Somebody make me stop.