Puzzled

We’ve not been puzzle doers to this point. Sure, Sam had one or two puzzles as a preschooler. Okay, one. A big puzzle of eight dinosaurs we did together rather often for a while there. Hey, turns out I have movie of that: Sam's first time finishing the dinosaur puzzle when he was three years old.

But that decidedly unchallenging (for me) activity clearly wasn’t enough to knock loose a long forgotten Angie truism: I love puzzles. So, too, it seems, does one Mr. Jeremy Ashe. This, I did not know until one Sunday afternoon in Langley, when we pulled a puzzle out from under a pile of other games in the living room cabinet at Grandma and Grandpa Ashe’s. It was the last full day of our summer vacation and we were looking for a little low-key fun to pass the time while Malcolm, Carolyn, Amanda and Marissa crossed the Rockies en route for Sunday dinner.

We clocked about four straight hours chatting around the coffee table, working against the clock to complete that teapot still life before the jeep pulled in the driveway. We turned that leisurely passtime into a competitive sport—“who’s king of the puzzle now?” And when we weren’t done by the time the company arrived, we beckoned them to pull up a cushion and lend a hand. I joked with Marissa, “Aren't you glad you came all this way for puzzle play?” But it was a nice introduction, building that sugar bowl and those lemon slices got us over the initial awkward small talk.

Then, during our Labour Day weekend at the Morley cottage, we found a puzzle in The Rustic of butterflies fluttering by in a mountain meadow. Nice way to pass a rainy afternoon (or two), though we made it only two-thirds of the way through and had to pack up in defeat. A completed puzzle is the triumph of order and beauty over chaos and fragmentation … but a partially completed puzzle is an enticing siren call that lures all my boatloads of productive intentions to smash on the treacherous shores of “one more piece, and then I’ll do the laundry.”

Which is why I was crazy to pick up a challenging 1000 piece puzzle a few months ago. We set it up on our coffee table, expecting to nail that baby together in a few sessions. It’s hard to tell from the photo, but that Napa Valley Wine Train painting is rather impressionistic. Is this part of the flower garden or somebody’s face? Hhhmm. It took some of the Christmas holidays (and a few record stints together), but we finally got’er done with Sam and Carter placing the last 4 pieces in triumph! That puzzle remained on the table top for longer than absolutely necessary… Nice, eh?

Then we speed-puzzled a 300-piecer that Sam got for Christmas (on Jeremy’s new puzzle mat). Took the three of us exactly an hour to slam this beauty together. It helped that the pieces were ginormous and the painting style relatively naïve, but we each had a job to do and we were flawless if frenzied in the execution: Sam worked on the paddlers, Jeremy worked from the sky down, and I sorted and passed pieces to keep the boys going. So much fun! Sam tapped in the final piece and we set the camera on timer to record the occasion.

Daddy missed his mark on the first try…

There we are. A puzzling family. So to speak...