Rainy Days

It’s been pretty rainy lately. Nothing much to do but stay inside. I figured I could either clean or do something fun. Susi, in our graphics department, had some jigsaw puzzles that she was ready to part with and I remembered how much fun my family always had putting them together.

Two weeks later and we are on number 4. Everyone has gotten involved, from my mother, Sonja Behnke Festerling, to my husband, and even our grandchildren. Mom and our little Zoe really enjoyed turning all the pieces over and getting the edges done. Lots of concentration went into it, while using a special language that only a 2-year-old and an 85-year-old could understand. They worked for over an hour and kept coming back. Then my husband and grandson took over looking for certain pieces just knowing that some had to be missing. They weren’t.  Now on to choose the fifth puzzle.

I am finding it very relaxing working on these puzzles…until my husband hands me a piece he is working on and interrupts my focus. While he will work and work on the puzzle, I tend to walk away and then come back and viola, find a piece! Still, we are able to laugh and just enjoy the time spent. I even went out and bought a card table just so we could set up in the living room. Aaron, our grandson, comes in from school each afternoon to see how the progress is going and has started his own 100 piece puzzle instead of watching a cartoon.

I read somewhere once that piecing together a jigsaw puzzle is an excellent exercise for the brain, but for me, the best thing about working on puzzles is the conversations that go on while doing them.  I hope that with the coming storms, after you have battened down the hatches and are safe, you find time to pull out an old puzzle or two and rediscover, like I have, the joy of building a masterpiece!

by Stephanie Fleming, Behnke’s Vice President