Snapping the last few pieces of the puzzle into place felt like a triumph; a head-swirling trophy-holding accomplishment.

I laughed at my reaction even though I still felt like someone should be interviewing me on my incredible feat: How’d you manage it Colleen? 1000 pieces? You really are something…etc.

And this, my darlings, are the times we live in. A completed puzzle is my imaginary interview-worthy achievement.

There are days when I feel like I’m practising for entry into a senior’s home. Next I’ll be playing volleyball with balloons.

Lord help us all.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Why puzzles? Why knitting? Why do all these pandemic projects feel so necessary?

But we’re all (the entire bloody world!) processing so much change and information. Even if you manage to stay away from the news, you cannot escape the covid conversations and the surreal vision of masked humanity.

But look, we put aside crazy realities all the time.

For instance, right this second, the earth is spinning around at 1,674 kms/hour. We are stuck on a blue marble, held here by an invisible glue called gravity while hurtling through infinity and we all just act as if that’s normal.

Seriously?!?

If we can absorb that reality and carry on, well, maybe there are other things we can hold in our orbit as well.

I remember another time of massive processing.

We lived by the ocean at the time.

 

 

I loved our life on the beach that included a little back garden of flowers and trees with its wobbly old cottage fence. The salt air, the moss-rich rain…

But my early forties were also fraught with anxieties that I’d only begun to realize I had. Thank you Linda Varin, therapist extraordinaire. She was holding up a light into the mess that was my mind and we were slowly working through my revelations. Right in the throes of all that, we abruptly became foster parents to my 11-year old nephew.

Oh, and Kevin was away most of the week in Vancouver, working on his master’s in economics. So there was that.

There were, I believe, a few things that helped me hold myself together (of course, it could be argued as to how well that was accomplished):

• Hiking in the forest while talking with my friends.
• Gardening.
• Meditation

I would hike and cry and then cry and hike. In between I would see Linda and peel back another revelatory layer of angst.

I would sit with my screaming mind and pay attention to breathing. Slowly inhale…slowly exhale. In between I would see Linda and peel back another revelatory layer of angst.

Then I would garden. I raked rocks to one side. I moved them back to the other. In between I would see Linda and peel back another revelatory layer of angst.

I sunk bricks into a patio. I pulled them all out. I dug out weeds. In between I would see Linda and peel back another revelatory layer of angst.

I rearranged and moved plants so often, Kevin declared they should have wheels.

 

 

But what I was doing was processing. There was machinations and work going on behind the scenes. I was making peace with my inner and outer chaos.

I was using my hands to make my world. I baked a loaf of bread and somehow the world felt a little more ordered. I had controlled an outcome.

Puzzles and all our other pandemic projects serve the same purpose.

What is a puzzle other than a metaphor for what is happening right now?

We tip out a box of disconnected pieces and slowly we puzzle our way into creating order. When it’s complete we see the whole picture. Right now, our lives are the tipped out million-piece puzzle and we are slowly shoving any piece we can into something that helps us feel complete.

That’s my story and metaphor, and dammit, I shall not be swayed. Oh wait! Certainty is another way of creating order. We hold certain beliefs and then die on a hill of our own making. Perhaps, just perhaps, one should remain open to other possibilities, in spite of how open-ended and chaotic it might feel. Just a thought.

Anyone that’s read any of my previous posts knows that mostly I’m talking to myself. I set myself down and give myself, as my mother used to say, “a good talking to”, and what I’m telling me (and you) is this…we already hold the reality of our inevitable deaths in one hand.

Yes indeed, we walk around making plans and thinking that we’re going to be here to see things through, even though we know the truth is a little more fragile than that. We are finite. We know it, but it’s also an almost impossible-to-imagine thought.

And then, we also carry the aforementioned crazy-making knowledge that this planet is going really really fast around a blazing ball of burning gasses.

So why not add in a pandemic?  It’s not much crazier than death and a spinning planet. Not really.

Look. It’s going to be okay…or something.

We’re going to bumble through this and we will be amazed at our ability to survive. And since survival is really the only goal, then everything else we manage is a bonus, right?

So let’s slap a little order onto our world, one puzzle piece, one cleaned sink, one thriving houseplant, one pot of soup, one loaf of bread, or whatever else we can dream up…just pick something small and get it done. Oh. And call a friend. Don’t forget that.

It all helps. It really does.

Together while apart, using the smallest of pieces, we’re actually pulling off something really big.

It’s the ultimate puzzle.

There really should be interviews.