The whole episode started with a lie. My daughter Anna and I have enjoyed working jigsaw puzzles together since she was “knee high to a grasshopper” to borrow a Southernism. I sent a text with choices of puzzle preferences when I knew she was coming for the holidays. She texted back that she expected to be too “brain dead” to do a puzzle after her busy season at work. I read her text and told my husband that she was bringing a puzzle for a Christmas present. I’ve known her long enough to know that while she is generally a person to be trusted, she has been known to lie during gift-giving seasons. I did not know the saga that would ensue.
Anna and her husband Mark arrived in the late afternoon on December 26 with a package containing the expected gift puzzle. She was hit with two surprises, the first being that I had guessed it ahead of time. The second was that I had figured it without the clue that should have been here already. She had mailed a package on December 18 with an extra charge for three day delivery and a tracking code. We had seen no sign of it.
The package contained the edge pieces that she had carefully separated in three rounds of going through the puzzle. The puzzle itself was the first section of A Christmas Carol up through the warehouse party in tiny green print with every piece a similar square shape – a real “hoo-boy” category of puzzle. She figured if I got the edge pieces in three days (December 21) I would have the outline done before she arrived. As I listened to her relate her carefully thought out plan, my mind went back to my mother reading Robert Burns, one of her favorite poets, to us at bedtime.
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
Anna’s marvelous plan hit a snag when USPS took the package on a tour. We sandwiched our usual celebration of fixing a few puzzle pieces, talking, and eating with a new activity. Tracking became an integral part of our Christmas celebration. At 7 AM on December 27, the package was at Lake, Mississippi (which few in Mississippi have even heard of) – 118 miles and a one hour, 54 minute drive from Hattiesburg. At 10 AM on December 29, the package was in Nashville. At 8:24 PM on December 29, it was in Mobile. At 2:21 on January 2, the package was in my mailbox. Anna was already back in Texas.
The puzzle, still a work in progress, is every bit as perplexing as she had expected it to be. The picture on the cover of the box is no help at all. Even with no cataracts and added reading glasses, the print is too fine to make out. Anna did send a link that I can get on my phone or computer that is readable in small sections. So here I am with a project for the new year that may well foreshadow what the year itself will bring as it has both positives and negatives. The negatives are the tiny writing, the small pieces and lack of variation in their shape and size, and that lack of a good picture for reference. The positives are that I have A Christmas Carol mostly memorized, and I love a challenge. Perhaps Anna found the best one of all when she said, “Well, this gives us another family story.”