Here in Helsinki, we are in the eighth week of quarantine living. What initially felt like a long-form slumber party, complete with the most indulgent of snacks and Netflix binges, has quickly devolved into house arrest. Life is dull and monotonous with hours upon hours that need filling—this without the benefit of a change of setting or introduction of a new character. Day to day, everything is exactly the same and yet somehow life has moved at warp speed, with one hour blending into the next until suddenly it was May and I realized that I have become the type of person I never imagined myself to be—which is to say, a married woman who does jigsaw puzzles.
The introduction of a 2000-piece print of the Venetian harbor is the latest example of how I need to eat my pre-quarantine words. Just a few weeks ago, I was snarking to Valtteri about the number of pictures of incomplete puzzles flooding my social media feeds. Fast-forward a few weeks and I’m not only filling my own Instagram account with such content, but I’m also making it part of my storyline.
Having spent the better part of my free time over the past week on a puzzle, I can admit that I now understand the appeal. Puzzles are a time suck. They are the perfect way to exhaust your mind without giving it anything of real consequence to consider. For many of us still following the rules, they are the cheapest, most productive ways to blow a weekend.
With so many of us turning to puzzles at about the same time, I think it’s safe to say that we’re about one or two weeks out from a few think pieces on the subject:
Five things I learned about myself while doing a puzzle
Puzzles as metaphor for parenthood
What puzzles say about our subconscious
Puzzles: Have they become too popular?
I eagerly await those personal essays. Meanwhile, here in the Halli-hunen household, puzzles have unwittingly taken me on a trip down memory lane. And the journey turned out to be not one I wanted to make—not even when there’s nowhere else to go.
It was Saturday afternoon when Valtteri walked through the door of our apartment, puzzle box in one hand and bottle of Valpolicella Ripasso in the other. He uncorked the bottle, opened the box and dumped two thousand small pieces of cardboard onto the floor.
“Hm,” he said. “Where to start?”
I figured the question was rhetorical, until he started picking out pieces at random and trying to fit them together.
“With the border,” I answered. “You start with the edges.” Then, for effect, I drew a box in the air with my two index fingers in case my husband, a man who speaks four languages didn’t understand the word border, which would be interesting considering that it is precisely the reason why he had to marry me.
“OK,” he said. “You can start the border. I’ll work on the sky.”
I looked up from the handful of pieces I was sorting and picked up the box. The sky was roughly one-third of the puzzle and it would be the hardest part, as it was almost entirely shaded blue and uniform cloud. I was about to launch into a lecture about the merits of starting with the 600 most difficult pieces of this puzzle, when I had the good sense to stop myself. Not because I didn’t want to argue with my husband, but because I had been down this road once before. It was Thanksgiving Day about ten years ago and I had agreed to do a puzzle with a seven-year-old. He too opened the box and started plucking pieces at random, matching the leaves of trees without sorting a single edge.
I, an adult with so much to give the world, thought I would teach this child how to properly do a puzzle.
“The first thing we should do,” I suggested, “Is find the four corners.” I sifted through the box until I found one and then held it up to the picture on the box. “See this one goes here,” I said, placing it in a corresponding position on the floor. The child looked up from the tree he had built while I was pawing around like a cat in a litter box and smiled. “Hey that’s great,” he said, like I was someone who needed to be humored.
“Did your parents never teach you to start with the edges?” I asked.
“Nope,” he said.
“So you just make these however you want?” I asked.
“Yep,” he said.
“Just whatever order you feel like?”
“Yep,” he said.
I remember my entire world turning upside down. It’s was one of those little moments when you realize that the way you always did things isn’t the way that everyone else does them. Furthermore, the way you do them isn’t right or wrong, but different. This was an experience I did not care to repeat with my husband. So I swallowed my sense of order and logic and let him think he was going to build the sky.
That serenity lasted all of five minutes. Valtteri, who was in the process of sorting 600 pieces of blue, found two pieces that were still connected.
“Ooo,” he cooed, setting them aside. “A bonus.”
I snatched them up just as quickly and snapped them apart. “No bonus,” I snapped. “That’s cheating.” Then, as if possessed by some kind of demon, I began pawing at the pile, shuffling all the pieces.
“What are you doing?” Valtteri asked.
“I’m mixing the pieces up,” I answered. I would have thought this was obvious, much like starting with the edges.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because!” I said, plucking two more connected pieces out of the pile and breaking them apart. “Because they need to be mixed!”
I am not exaggerating when I say that Valtteri looked at me the same way the seven-year-old did all those years ago.
“Shall I get the Kitchenaid?” he joked.
“Alright,” I said, ignoring the question. “Now let’s turn all the pieces over.”
“Why?” he asked.
“So that we can see them!” I answered, practically yelling now.
“And then what?” he asked.
“We get the edges!” I said, my voice still rising. “The corners and the edges!!”
Valtteri picked up a single piece that could not be more basic and pretended to look at it. I swatted it out of his hand like a deranged cat. “That’s not an edge!” I snapped. “You need to find the edges. Like this,” I said, showing him a piece and running my finger along the edge like Helen Keller. “You need all the straight pieces.”
“Why?” he asked.
“So that you can make the border!!” I answered, hysterical now. “You need to make the border first. You sort the pieces and then you find the corners and then you do the border and then you sort the pieces by type and—”
“Ooo,” Valtteri interrupted me to display a connector piece, a square with a tab on each side. He set it aside.
“That’s not an edge,” I argued.
“I know,” he said. “But that’s an important piece.”
“How is that important?” I demanded. I picked it up and showed it to him in case he forgot what it looked like. “How is this important?” I repeated.
He took the piece out of my hand. “I just like it,” he said. “It has part of the dome on it and I like it.”
The dome, dear reader, was the focal point of the puzzle, which is to say it was in the middle, which is another way of saying we weren’t there yet.
I looked at Valtteri who had returned to sorting pieces and had now pulled out a small statue.
“A statue,” he said.
I narrowed my eyes. “Are you fucking with me?” I asked.
“What?” Valtteri asked. “We’re doing a puzzle. This is how you do puzzles.”
“This isn’t how you do puzzles,” I argued.
“It isn’t?” he asked. “I don’t know. We didn’t do a lot of puzzles.”
“Well I did!” I said. “We did a lot of puzzles growing up. And this isn’t how you do them.”
“It sounds like it,” he said. “Sounds like you made a lot of puzzles. Sounds like fun.”
It was around this time in the story when I excused myself to call my friend Oishee. To the best of my knowledge, she is not into puzzles. However, she had strict parents and drinks tea and likes house plants, which are three characteristics that typically make up a Venn diagram for puzzle enthusiasts. Unfortunately, it was 4 a.m. local time on the East Coast and I decided it wasn’t worth waking her up to have a conversation about building techniques and, more importantly, if my system makes me a psychopath.
Like most people who call their best friend to settle an argument, I was pretty confident that Oishee would agree with me, even if she didn’t know what she was talking about. Logically speaking, you start with the outside of a puzzle and work your way in by section. Doing this did not make me crazy, though there are perhaps some other pieces of evidence, such as screaming at my husband and then storming off to the bathroom with an iPhone, that could allow one to make the case otherwise. For the second time, I decided to let the whole thing go.
I went back into the living room where Valtteri was now holding up two beige pieces with a black line. “Look,” he said. “This is a lamp!”
I turned around and walked back out of the room. And that’s when it hit me: This was like the Christmas tree.
The Christmas tree, for those of you who don’t know, is a reference to the 18-foot pine that my father would chop down by hand, tie to the roof of a much shorter Jeep, and then haul through our patio windows every December of my childhood. My mother did not support this behavior, but tolerated it, enabled it even—holding the trunk in place while my brother scrambled on top of the car and fastened it to the luggage rack. I look back on it now and wonder about those occassions when she let the tree roll off the car and then wandered off into the woods. At the time, I thought she was avoiding getting crushed by an 18-foot pine. Now I see it as a form of protest.
For years, this is how I thought people got their Christmas trees. All people. Everywhere. All the screaming, yelling, maneuvering, leaking of sap, scattering of needles—I thought this was a normal Christmas experience even for the families who kept their tree in a box in the basement. It didn’t occur to me that the problem wasn’t the tree, so much as the size of the tree and maybe the people trying to drag it out of the forest. And so I just went on believing that Christmas was a lot of work and that getting a tree involved one member of the family telling all the others that they don’t know how to do anything right—anything being stuffing an adult pine through a double window.
It wasn’t until my mid-twenties, when I was living in Manhattan with a Chinese-American woman that I learned any different. We were about to throw a Christmas party when she made an offhand comment about “getting a tree.” I looked at her like she was possessed. Our guests were due to arrive in an hour and we had yet to plate our assortment of Jello shots. But she insisted, insisted, on buying a tree once her boyfriend arrived. And then, like some little Christmas miracle they did—they went downstairs to the corner bodega, bought a tree that was already in its stand, carried it up the steps, snipped off the netting and viola! Christmas tree! No yelling, no fighting, no donning of work gloves or rigging of modified pully system to get the tree through the sliding glass door of our patio. It just arrived.
I liked that roommate for many reasons, but my favorite, my absolute favorite is that she taught me how to Christmas.
Back in Helsinki, I was having a similar sort of moment, realizing that this thing that I had done over and over as a child—this task that involved rules and orders and instructions—had come to be more chore than game in my mind’s eye. I was snarking about all the puzzle pictures not because I wanted to rob people of their joy in the middle of a lockdown, but because they surfaced an unpleasant memory–one I didn’t even realize I had until I sat down with one and started screaming at my husband about a border.
Techniques and experience aside, I don’t think puzzles would have been my activity of choice even if I had been granted license to do them in whatever way I wished. I look at my life and how I got to today, putting pieces any which way in whatever order I wanted, ripping them up, putting them back down and then almost, almost, throwing the whole box away. I think of myself as a person without edges, without borders. There is no picture on the box that I am trying to replicate. I have some corners laid, that is true, but there is still so much building left to do and I have no idea where that will lead. I say that because I am still not so sure how I got to where I am.
Being on lockdown has given us all an opportunity to reexamine who we really are—not what we do, not what we like, not who we spend time with but who we are and who we want to be. I am not a puzzle person, that is very clear. But I’ll be damned if I didn’t find some meaning in that box, just the same.
We could do puzzles together. I’m glad you found some sort of meaning, but…. you were still right, there are rules to starting the puzzle! Lol! Just like loading the dishwasher… don’t get me started. :)
Wow i remember those Christmas trees but i had no idea of the family drama involved! And when we did puzzles as a family, one of us would hide one piece so we could be the one to put in the last piece, always the best part.
really? we never alluded to the mayhem that was involved? not even my mother? didn’t you ask, “how did you transport the tree here?” “how did you get through the door?” “WHAT WINDOWS?” these are obvious questions, rebecca. i suppose you were polite guests, not wanting to ask the questions you already knew the answers to.
as for puzzles, i so closely associate them with mark! a lot of times when he would come to visit, we would get one out. he, i’m sure, followed the “rules” but did not do so with the disposition of a drill sergeant. xx.
omg what are the rules to the dishwasher??? i honestly NEVER had one. well. growing up, we never did. in my first few apartments, i did not. by the time i finally got one, i was so excited but then i realized i didn’t have enough dishes to ever fill it (single life), so i would put the two plates in and then have to take them out and wash them by hand. we have a nice kitchen now, but the dishwasher is this tiny little thing that doesn’t clean anything, not even the cups. also, my plates, of which i now have EIGHT, do not fit. so we use that as a conversation piece/extra cabinet. that and the matching baby sized oven are the only reasons I would ever want to move out of this place. but i digress. WHAT ARE THE DISHWASHER RULES?
Nova, This is one of your best! Thanks!
thank you so much! i appreciate it. hope to see you soon :)
Okay but REALLY you have to start with the edges, and I don’t think I knew that there are people in the world that don’t? Mostly in the sense that if I don’t start with the edges, and work from there I honestly don’t think I’d know where to start… Puzzles are not my choice of activity either, but we seem to do one every Christmas, and I find them endlessly frustrating.
thank you. THANK YOU. a million times THANK YOU. “i’ll start with the sky.” OMG, i’ll start with YOU.
Wow! That was a deep dive. You are right, though. The lockdown has caused everyone to re-examine their lives and priorities. Though, it looks like it is teaching you major lessons about who you are and why. That is a very good use of this time.
yes it was… i really did have a few moments as i was doing it. how if you change your angle or step back (literally) you can suddenly see what you’re looking for… like the shades are more noticeably different, the sizes are more obvious. and then there was that point of diminishing returns where you keep on plugging away even though you’re not getting anywhere… but then you come back with fresh eyes and boom boom boom ten pieces right off the bat. there are lessons in that box, truly. i’ll let someone else write that essay.
best to you and yours in the lockdown and beyond.
I too learned that edges first, mix up the pieces, no keeping the “freebies” together, but I’ve also discovered that you can do it however you like. You can also mix up a couple of puzzles for added challenge. The sky is the limit! I never realized that a puzzle could be a life lessons source, but in hindight, of course it can!
well thank you. i have never mixed puzzles but that sounds like some NEXT LEVEL shit. we’re not there yet. but i will keep it in mind.
I cannot do a jigsaw puzzle alone, or without a TV to distract me. My mind starts whirring in the silence, and soon Im reliving every damn misery in my life, one ache and pain after another.
Not worth it.
The last time I did a puzzle before i got married, it was a huge sucker, one of those 3000 piece things with trees and sky and water. You know. Every night when I came home from work, after supper I’d head for the living room where i had it set up. My folks would watch tv, and I’d spend an hour or so on the puzzle.
On the last night I had about a dozen pieces to go, and I’d saved that for a good finish. I turned on the light, and the puzzle was done. My mother’s voice came out of the dark. “I thought you might like some help at the end.” (you could hear the smirk). And my father: “I told you not to do that”.
And I said, ‘thank you.” put out the light, and left the room.
Sigh. My only rule is: you starts it, you get to finish it. And while I do like to start with the border, along the way if I find bits that go together I consider it a bonus.
Oh wow… not cool, Mom. Not cool at all.
I actually had the opposite experience though in that I got so wrapped up in it. it doesn’t help that we’re approaching 24-hours of light here so we would sit down at maybe 6 or so and do the puzzle for a while and then suddenly realize it was after 10 and we hadn’t made dinner. the sun will do that to you. so will an unhealthy work ethic
Literally COULD NOT RELATE MORE to this story, your memories and your learnings. I actually felt my anxiety building as you described your hubby’s seemingly random pilfering of puzzle pieces, and said in my head “DO THE EDGES FIRST!” ALSO THE CHRISTMAS MEMORIES. Good god, my PTSD is R A G I N G. Thanks for laughs and the unexpected therapy session!
hiiii. sorry for the delay. i’m sorry to hear that this is so relatable because it implies that you occasionally feel as i do, which is to say crazy. i’m sorry if that word is inappropriate but it is the only way to describe how i feel when i rage over a puzzle. in any case, thank you for reading. and i’m glad it made you laugh. life has changed a lot in recent years and for that i’m very grateful.
Okay, first of all, you are 100% right about how to do puzzles. IS THERE ANY OTHER WAY?!
Second of all, I laughed out loud several times while reading this.
well we might be doing puzzles the most logical and common way but THERE ARE OTHER WAYS and i know that for a fact. got two random pieces of lamp to prove it.
glad you’re laughing… hope you are getting extra extra extra excited for your move!! i love love love Montana despite having never been there. let me know when you’re ready for visitors.