Puzzling

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You might just know that I love puzzles. I always have. My favorite one during childhood was Verticalville II. Elia, my sister, and I must have completed it two dozen times.

A few years back, after the pneumonia-induced staycation that ushered in my renewed mania for puzzles, I managed to find on eBay, an unopened, original Verticalville II. I bought it immediately, ostensibly for the boys.

Oliver doesn't much care for puzzles, but Jack is a big fan, and though he and I prefer 1,000-piecers, we've done Verticalville II -a mere 500- twice or three times since I bought it. He loves it like I do, because it's challenging but not too much so and delightfully illustrated.

Nanny enjoyed puzzles before her hands and eyes failed her. She loved landscapes: fall foliage, say, or a Christmas scene. Those aren't my bag, but since she died, the kids, Mom and I have put a few of her old ones together during visits to Lake Charles, and I always feel so happy to do so. I miss her.

I used to puzzle in my basement, but after Nutmeg employed two box tops full of inside pieces as his litter box, I've moved upstairs, by a window in my front room. My one nice room, as the kids know. There sits a decent-enough card table and a much nicer folding chair that doubles as an extra dining seat when we have more than six for dinner. 

Last night, Jack and I wrapped up this one: Fancy Buttons or some such name, a 1,000-piece by Ravensburger. It was really a near-perfect puzzle. Tough but not like the one of the snowy owl that made you want to tear your hair out and pitch the endless white pieces into the nearest fireplace. Colorful and interesting enough to keep you engaged, even during the periods of slow progress.

That's one thing I like about puzzles. They don't mind waiting if I need to take a break from them. Nothing is urgent except, perhaps, for my desire to get back to the one at hand. 

Puzzles can take full concentration or allow me to feel mindfully absent. Sorting edge pieces, for example, takes little effort, but figuring out which of four identical green circles this or that piece fits into requires a great deal more focus.

While puzzles are both random and orderly, it is always true that many pieces comprise the whole, and absent the box-top photo, you're never completely sure about what the jig is going to look like until you slot the last piece in.

Isn't that rather like life? And parenting?

Clues litter the paths we can take. Colors, shapes, parts of words and phrases, experiences, mistakes. All guide us forward, clearly or not remotely so. Some days feel successful, some feel like trapdoors that push us back to the starting point. Sometimes puzzles, life, are frustrating. We throw up our hands and stalk off. But sometimes, we hit our strides, and our shoulders life with the sense of accomplishment.

We move forward, with blind faith, determination, youthful joy and even some trepidation about what might appear when we slot the next piece correctly. When we reach the next milestone, successfully teach or learn the next skill. 

While some puzzles are whimsical flights of fancy, not unlike a choose-your-next-step adventure book, others are lithographs of life, snapshots of time and place taking shape before your eyes.  

The obvious difference of course is that a puzzle, once done, can be broken apart and tucked away for later, left to gather dust on a shelf. A goal accomplished.

Life isn't so neat. Parenting isn't ever really done. But in both, the beautiful parts are essential to the whole, and I find that lovely indeed.

Do you know?

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Do you know that some of my days are the happiest I've lived? That after twelve years, my favorite date night is one spent laughing in bed with my husband?

Do you know that when I awake to the gentle nudge of a little hand attached to a young voice saying "Mama! Mom! Mommy! Are you up?", I shrug in the weighty haze of sleep, open my covers instinctively, and eagerly welcome into my nest one or both of my small offspring?

Do you know that I never tire of seeing my sons' faces as they first see mine in the pick-up line after school? Do you know that on the day they stay until 4:30pm because one loves chess and the other loves science, I miss them and dare the hours to pass more slowly?

Do you know that my boys saying, "I love you" is some of the sweetest music ever sung? That the notes they write me in awkward handwriting are perhaps the best love letters I've ever received? That I still smile when I hear my husband's key in the lock?

Do you know that in the moments I allow myself to consider what life would be like were something to happen to one of them, both of them, all of them, I can't stand it? Can't fathom it? Panic?

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Do you know that I am sometimes crippled by tremendous anxiety? And that it is sometimes, or even often, brought on or exacerbated by my darling children and their love for me? 

Do you know what it feels like to need a good deal of alone time but to push that need away daily? As if you're running a marathon in the summer sun but must eschew the rehydration stations along the way.

Do you know what it's like to have almost nothing left for your partner when finally he or she returns home?

Do you know about the challenge of finding good child care and of affording it?

Do you know about counting on the minimum sleep/days at school/you name it and being cheated of that? Do you know what that does to you? To your friends? To those you don't know?

Do you know the feelings of failure and shame all of that knowledge elicits in women who want to do best by their children? And who feel that the smallest slips set them back dramatically? Mar their children beyond what's "normal"?

Do you know the feelings of failure and shame and worry that knowledge elicits in me?

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Do you know that each time someone like Sarah Silverman or Hayden Panettiere or Brooke Shields or Gwyneth Paltrow or Catherine Zeta-Jones publicly admits to depression or anxiety or postpartum depression, so many women breathe a collective sigh of relief and are saved by knowing they are not alone?

Do you know that this is all hard? That life is hard? That motherhood is hard? That unearthing and living as our truest selves is hard? That gilding those lilies is a profound disservice to individual struggle? That honesty would make individual struggles less solitary?

Do you know that in unabashed truth there is not only relief but joy? Connection? Empowerment?

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I know all of these things now. I know them even when they're hard to accept. When they're difficult to say aloud. When loved ones frown or shrink away from what I know and say aloud.

I know that my friends know these things. That readers know these things. That strangers do.

I want to own them and share them with you because when others have done so in the past, I am strengthened and made more brave. I am comforted. I am normed. As are you. 

And what better to know?