In this pandemic, you find puzzles again.
“Look for the four corner pieces first.”
You capture concentration to calm the chaos. You avoid despair by distraction. Every day, the news reports the latest numbers. A line on a chart stabs forward like an airplane taking off, its upward tilt only increasing. Will it ever ease up, level off?
The radio plays alongside your puzzle-making.
“We improvise by sharing respirators. ICU beds are nearly at capacity,” a female voice says. She pauses and with shaky breath, “We’re working continuous shifts; we’re exhausted.”
You retreat into your puzzle—this one called The Sanctuary of Knowledge—and allow yourself to fit blue, red, and yellow books into their melted chocolate brown bookshelves. In this pandemic, you build your own bookshelf of knowledge You discover new authors, rediscover the classics. The dust sprinkles across colorful shapes that form Aesop’s Fables, Jack and the Beanstalk, then Pinocchio; they become Readers Paradise.
“Here, let’s put all the matching colors together in separate piles.”
As you work, you forget the outside world and celebrate Beethoven’s 250th birthday on the classical music station. You learn what it means to slow down as piano keys and the violin click together into their own magical performance. You sit still, your head bent over the box, raking through colors like leaves in the throes of a New England autumn. You lean forward, realize this strains your back, puts kinks in your neck, but you find it hard to step away from the quest.
“Millions of Americans are unsure how they will pay their monthly rent.”
“I think those feathers go with the other chicken.”
You find refuge in pieces of orange and white, blue and gray, red and black feathers in Nobody Here But Us Chickens. You are amused as you put together the silly sayings: You can be a rooster one day, and a feather duster the next. Or: I wonder if chickens do the people dance at their weddings? You are ten again, standing next to the barn at your Kentucky childhood home, where goats, pigs and chickens roam. There are sixteen chickens in this puzzle. And you thought there were only two kinds.
“That color goes with the skyline, not the building’s shadow.”
You rediscover youth with Midnight at the Library when an emerald green dragon breathes fire alongside Goldilocks and three bears; Sherlock Holmes peers through a spy glass, looking for clues. You reminisce of trips to Europe as you put together a pink, purple and turquoise evening sky over a sidewalk glowing in soft orange-yellow from a local café in Parisian Sunset. There are the colorful flowers, fresh produce and yellow Labrador Retriever in Sale on the Square that turns your patience into perfect purpose.
“Today, the CDC announced updated guidelines on when to wear masks based on vaccination status.”
“Make sure they click together. That edge looks like it might not completely match.”
Garden Birds and Home Tweet Home mirror your backyard with alert robins, a bright red-headed woodpecker and dainty gray and white titmice. A steaming foam-draped latte and fancy butter cookies on the table in Cozy Cabin remind you of your trip to Istanbul over a decade ago where you read an English-language version of the local newspaper sitting at an outside café table. There is The Bizarre Workshop and The Reading Room. You notice a theme. You immerse into the puzzle as you disappear into writing and books.
“We report a staggering statistic: the United States has surpassed over three quarters of a million deaths from COVID-19.”
You gasp, then shift into child-like pleasure when separate sections form a completed picture. Your fingertips rub against puzzle dust as you lift the last piece from the box. You breathe in the magic. Your palm slides over the smooth yet textured surface in a final move of accomplishment.
“Nicely done, baby.”
And yet, you wonder when pandemic’s dust will settle.
- Puzzle Dust - June 13, 2022