Sprawled on the Floor, Doing a Puzzle

by Daniel Sean Kaye

puzzle_chaos.jpg class=righthand width=300 height=199 On President’s Day my 4-year-old, was off from school. I’d taken a half-day to watch him (even though I was on deadline and my mind was elsewhere) and I was trying to find something to do to keep him occupied as I disappeared to try getting some work done at the computer.

All of a sudden, he appears at my office door with a gentle smile, holding a puzzle.

“Will you do this puzzle with me?”

“Of course, I will,” I say, secretly wishing I could get him to do it by himself.

But then we lie down on the living room carpet, dump out the pieces, and start working together on a picture of farmyard animals. An hour and three puzzles later, we are still having a great time working together. He tells me what “picture” he’s looking for and the two of us hunt for it, both giggling as we pretend the pieces don’t want to get in the puzzle or that one piece wants to eat the other.

Even though I’ll be kicking myself tomorrow as I struggle to get 64 pages of my magazine done, this is the most well-spent morning I’ve had in a long time. Just me, my son, and a simple puzzle—a Norman Rockwell moment I hope to remember for a very long time.

March 03, 2008

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