Holiday Jigsaw Puzzle
Family, feasting and occupational therapy
By choice, we did no socialising over Christmas as there had been so much of it beforehand. It was a simple (but very well catered) family affair and the weather was relentlessly foul. We lost ourselves in the annual charity shop jigsaw puzzle, the real/unreal world vanished by the power of our focused concentration. Entrepreneurial types in the lifestyle industry sell “mindfulness” courses to those who feel they need them. This cost just £1.50.
Back to reality now, and feeling much the better for a break from it.
Holiday Jigsaw Puzzle
Two thousand pieces turned out to be
one thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine.
We lost a whole week and almost our minds
trying to find what we could not see.
We refashioned Noah, his wife and their sons,
the teeming menagerie boarding the Ark;
the fiendishly uniform edge was complete,
but where was the second aardvark?
We pored over detail, ignored the big picture,
let Perfect be enemy of the Good,
rebuilding the deconstructed depiction,
as hours flew by yet time just stood.
Day after day, step by small step,
the easy bits first, we worked in reverse
to the artist, who must have started his masterpiece
painting the sky, which we left till last.
His task can’t have been as arduous as ours!
We laboured for longer, surely, than Noah,
compelled to continue by some strange seduction
that drew us toward it each time we came near.
Each morning, when daylight and eyesight were clear,
the pieces went in two by two
to chorused hurrahs and renewed belief
that perseverance would lead us through.
It was New Year’s Eve when we ended our feast.
The one thousand nine hundred and ninety-ninth piece
was put into place to triumphal glee,
in spite of the space where the aardvark should be.
Flushed with delusions of epic success,
we left our great work on display for a day
before we could face the brutal distress
of breaking it up to be given away.
Peppy Scott
