Puzzling the Year Out

The last day of this most troubling and hopeful year didn’t go quite as I hoped. Here in Southern California, the rains we left in San Francisco found us and I have not stepped out of the house. After a morning of indoor puttering, it seemed like the right time to begin the 1,000-piece puzzle I brought down. It’s a map of the 97 National Parks in the continental United States, and is the perfect puzzle for three reasons:

 

1)   A great combination of words, numbers, clear images, without big swathes of just blue-sky. 

2)   My Christmas gift for Malik were three books of National Park mysteries, the first one set in Rocky Mountain National Park where we all had a big family reunion a couple of years ago, hiking in the places the story refers to. (This from a series of 9 books by Aaron Johnson perfect for 5^th graders and fun for adults as well.)

3)   I was determined to “home-school” Malik in a school-neglected subject these days— U.S. (and world) geography. 

 

Those the practical reasons. Then the pleasure when Karen, Kerala, Talia, Zadie and Malik all gathered around and spontaneously started working in teams. Puzzling together is a happy family activity, working toward a common goal, enjoying the casual banter, feeling the thrill of a coherent image slowly taking shape through our own directed efforts. And perfect to end the year with my blood family, the ones who know me inside and out, are perfectly comfortable imitating with affectionate mockery my faces and expressions and words and movements. The chosen family of friends and colleagues and fellow teachers, musicians, writers, social justice carers and more are an important and enormous part of the life I’ve crafted. But family is something more, the people who will gather around your bed in your hour of need and I treasure them all. 

 

Four hours later, the puzzle is close to done and we’re all taking a break to help prepare dinner. These simple gestures a kind of love letter to the year that has passed and the one yet to come. No big words of wisdom and poetic inspiration here beyond everything I’ve said in the last 15 years (see last three posts). Just a little appreciation for the pleasure of sitting side-by-side at the table, putting together the puzzle of the places that hold Nature’s beauty in states that carry their own unique character that we someday may come to claim as part of a larger family, with every one worthy of our love and responsible to do their part to love others. Each of us working to put together the puzzle of our complex lives, one little piece as a time. 

 

Blessings to all in 2026.