DISPARATE PARTS

While on a shopping run to K mart to pick up paper towels, toilet paper, stool softeners, shaving cream, a “better pillow,” a pack of undershirts, and some more skin lotion, I came across the toy aisle and some jigsaw puzzles; I thought puzzles might be fun for all of us to do together.

The selection was limited, but I chose three: a covered bridge scene, a Pennsylvania Dutch motif, and a close-up of colorful hard candies.

The puzzles ended up being more of a hit with my mother and I, than my father. Occasionally Dad would pad into the living room, hover next to the card table - now referred to as the “puzzle table” - place a piece or two, feel satisfied with that, then shuffle back to the den.

We had permanently set the card table up in front of the green leather couch - behind the sliding glass doors, overlooking the pool. New puzzles were purchased weekly - now ranking in importance with prescriptions and groceries. We’d sit quietly for hours - with an occasional outburst of “Yeah baby!” after an arduously sought after piece snugged into place.

But for a sporadic “coming up for air” to watch something impressive or comical that Mother Nature was performing through the plate glass doors, our noses were glued to piles of puzzle pieces.

Putting puzzles together was the first thing to take my mind off all the turmoil that was going on; I’m guessing it was doing the same for my mother, because we’d both go for the “puzzle table” the same way one goes for a stiff drink - in the hope of it granting temporary sanity at the end of an awful day. Mom would sit with her glass of Chablis, and I with my pretzels and juice; as we put all the pieces together, I thought to myself, “Perhaps, someday I would.”

*an excerpt from my cancer memoir entitled CAR DEALER'S DAUGHTER