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I am participating in the
All participants are sharing stories about moments in their lives, writing
every day for the month of March 2021.
Thank you, Two Writing Teachers, for nurturing teacher-writers!
I figured out how to make a 1000 piece puzzle even more challenging! Spill a cup of tea on it. This lifts the whole picture right up, off of the individual pieces; in fact, it immediately separates each piece into 4-5 layers of super thin cardboard. (If you are game, you are now free to make multiple puzzles.)
Our picture puzzles give us a chance to 'travel' to new places during the pandemic, and we typically have one in process, sprawled out on one end of the dining room table. This one is/was a National Geographic image of Ushguli, Georgia. I received it as a gift at Christmas. When I dropped my tea cup all over it, I was instantaneously moved from serene, calm puzzle-maker into crisis mode: quick, stand up the cup! grab a towel! where are the towels?! quick! wipe the table! save the table! dry the wood! blot the puzzle! oh that doesn't work! it's seeped under! hmm. get out your blow dryer! - oh my goodness!
are those puzzle
fragments
flying
all about?
yikes.
I am not a good first responder for a puzzle disaster.
Throw away the puzzle.
Pause and reflect.
Dropping my cup of tea mid-process was the most unexpected, surreal, bizarre thing to happen to me - physically - in quite some time. I was holding the cup in my left hand, steady, I believed; using my dominant hand to connect the pieces I had discovered. I have combined tea and puzzles for years, with nary a problem. Both my hands are pretty dang strong. I've never had any issues with wrists giving way, or one hand feeling a little feeble. I wasn't tired, I wasn't rushing about. What the heck?
These things happen.
Hey, I am human - I've caused plenty of spills. Knocked things over. Slipped while holding something. Fallen. However, I've noticed that the older I get, these simple 'accident moments' have layers of extra weight and meaning when they happen.
I immediately wonder: is this an aging issue?
Will I one day look back on this moment and say, oh - that was when [.......] began?
Puzzling!!
Think I'll sit with a cup of tea, and write for a bit . . . .
Tea! Bless ordinary afternoon tea!
- Agatha Christie
