As an aside, if Black-ish isn't already a part of your regular viewing routine, I suggest you put it on the list. It is one of the smartest and most adventurous comedies on the air at the moment. It regularly takes risks with its family-centred storylines and it straddles the always perilous line between social consciousness and just plain fun. I highly recommend it.
In the episode entitled Bow Knows, mother of five Rainbow joins a mommy online group for support and advice. As part of the guilt and backlash she receives from her invisible and judgemental new friends, she decides to remove screen time from her children and chides them about their lack of other hobbies. The kids are reluctantly forced to interact with each other as they take up the supposedly archaic pastime of jigsaw puzzles. While they bitch and moan for most of the episode, a little spark of togetherness ignites while they aren't paying attention and when Bow ultimately returns their devices at the end of the show, they decide to stick with the puzzles.
I was delighted with the episode mostly because my mom and I have reignited our passion for jigsaw puzzles this season at The Southern Home. It started with a gift that Sister/Cousin bought for my parent's wedding anniversary in December. Why she thought my puzzle-challenged dad might enjoy this gift is still beyond my comprehension, but my mom was thrilled. We used to do puzzles all the time when I was a kid. She decided to wait until Younger Son and his B'shert visited in January to open it. The jigsaw was a bonding success. Mom bought a puzzle mat for her dining room table and she and her grandson spent several afternoons together deftly fitting Mickey Mouse's movie posters together. It was such a successful endeavour and I was so very pleased with the relaxation and pleasure that it brought my mother, I immediately ordered another after my kids left for home. And then another....and another.
I had forgotten just how much I truly enjoyed the quiet zen of doing jigsaw puzzles. While seen as a frivolous time-waster to some, I choose to look at it from other perspectives. The completion of a jigsaw is the restoration of wholeness from something that is in a perpetual state of brokenness or ugliness. Beauty is found not only in the completion but in the task itself. There is a quiet sense of flow as Mom and I work seamlessly together on the undertakings of shaping and sorting the pieces. The work moves quietly but deliberately until larger images seem to fall away into the concentration of mere shapes and colours. Shades on the colour spectrum and gradations matter so much more than full photographic representations. We often chat amiably as we go but, more often than not, we tend to work in quiet synchronization. I fill in the smaller details that Mom finds difficult to navigate with her "ageing eyesight" (her words, not mine) but she totally blows me out of the water with colour matching. That artistic eye has not abandoned her. There is no competition, only the common goal of completion. The only distractions are a bottle of Diet Coke for me or a coffee for her.
For a couple of hours each day, all of life's frustrations and complications have been set aside to work on an entirely doable thing. We may not be able to fix the ills of the outside world but we are able to find relief and reparation in the reassembling of something shattered back to its original integrity and in that task, we find some measure of peace and tranquillity. It has given me a space to recharge and find wholeness again for myself.
Look, I am not saying this is a hobby for everybody. The Husband and my dad would sooner paste their eyes shut with a hot glue gun rather than engage in this pastime. But just as Bow wanted her children to understand in that episode of Black-ish, the need to disconnect from things and to reconnect with people, even ourselves, is vital.
I have never been a good practitioner of meditation or mindfulness. I find that both exercises stress me out and that seems extraordinarily counterintuitive to their stated goals. Jigsaw puzzling, however, especially in the company of my mom, has given me a bit of peace over the past few months. It has afforded me a chance at a soul reset. I wouldn't call that a waste of time at all.
***We have one puzzle left to complete before I head home this weekend. It is Broadway musicals. I've saved the best for last.
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