The Missing Piece

Evidently, jigsaw puzzles are all the rage. Along with chess sets, sales have increased astronomically. I attribute this to the obvious: sheltering in place, record cold winters, and maintaining sanity.

Jigsaw puzzles evoke visits with retired grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Their cozy living rooms often harbored a card table with the half-completed visage of van Gogh, or a brilliant red cardinal amongst snowy pine boughs, or a picturesque Italian village teetering on a rocky mountain slope. As a bored teenager, a harried mother, or an empty nester looking for something other than Netflix in the evening, I’ve enjoyed placing the right piece in the right place.

I don’t know exactly how many puzzles I’ve put together in the last couple of years, but it’s definitely into the double digits. I’m particularly proud of completing a hair-pulling, 3D puzzle and an exceptionally difficult Ravensburger Challenge Series puzzle of Notre Dame’s famed stained-glass window. This pastime is therapeutic and just so darn satisfying except…

…when there’s a missing piece.

Admittedly, it takes me a month or two to complete a puzzle, and three times now, when I’ve been down to the last piece, it’s been missing. I scour the tabletop, the box, my sleeves, the floor, to no avail. Vanished. Gone, without a clue. I inspect the vacuum cleaner and the heat vent. I glower at the dogs—they like to chew things. And yet, I have never found the piece in question. Why on earth would such a horrible thing happen? I spend countless hours creating a glorious masterpiece only to find I cannot finish it? That’s downright evil.

Once in my fury, I wrote the manufacturer suggesting quite strongly that their puzzle was faulty. I took pictures of the gaping hole and implored them to send me the exact right piece, so I could have a deserved and rewarding finish. They sent a whole new puzzle. Really? I had to do an entire meditation around this. Why, powers to be, would you present me a puzzle with a missing piece?

The answer came to me one night while I was lying in bed, stewing and sleepless. “It’s not the destination, (Heide) it’s the journey.” This quote’s source is controversial, but some attribute it to Ralph Waldo Emerson, a transcendentalist and poet among other things—a smarty pants?

Well, if transcendentalism suggests I have everything within me (the divine) to be completely self-reliant—to transcend beyond my humanly senses and conquer all, I ask you, “Why can’t I find that damn missing piece?”