By nature, I prefer completion.

 

A sigh of release. A slight smile of satisfaction. A step back in quiet celebration.

 

By nature, I've always been more John Watson than Sherlock Holmes.

 

That is, let someone else figure it out; then let me write about it.

 

By nature, I'm restless until the many pieces of a project have either been placed or been discarded; until the many pieces of a project make sense as parts of the whole; until the many pieces of a project speak with one voice.

 

All of which explains why, for most of my life, I've found jigsaw puzzles to be a rather sadistic pastime. It was as if a voice spoke from the void with a malicious laugh, "Oh, I see you've finished your many competing deadlines. Now that you've a moment to relax, put this picture back together."

 

For years, a beloved elderly couple, owners of a California print shop, sent us off on vacation with a present--always, a jigsaw puzzle. I never had the heart tell them. Once, while perusing a catalog, I found an offering that I imagine might be sold if Perdition had a gift shop. It was a five-thousand piece jigsaw puzzle. It was round. It was red.

 

But things have changed. Over the past two years I've filled a closet with puzzles. Most of them throwbacks to another age: cut from quarter-inch sheets of wood; each piece unique and several cut as "whimsies"--fanciful shapes inspired by the puzzle's illustration; the beautiful pigments breathing new life into classic works of art, the tactile click of the enameled pieces, the fragrant trace of burnt wood--all summon my senses to the table.

 

My conversion at the table reflects a greater change in my life.

 

I've grown surprisingly comfortable with the incomplete.

Intrigued, even.

 

And that's a good thing.

 

For life itself will not be complete until I'm unable to declare it so. Life can be messy: the pieces don't always fit together as anticipated; it can be difficult to see the relationship of the piece to the big picture; and, sometimes, pieces are lost along the way, and I have to be okay with a hole in my picture.

 

But then again, as long as I can sit with the incomplete, nothing's certain, everything's an adventure; anything's possible.


For Ricardo, Amy, and Timoteo.