May 17, 2003
I thought it would be nice to do something (anything!) with my mother on Mother’s Day. She doesn’t like to go out to eat or to a movie. If I rent a movie to watch at home, she falls asleep during it. Most movies bore her because she has no idea how to suspend her disbelief or to imagine what it’s like to be anyone but who she is. There’s nowhere she wants to go and nothing she wants to do. It’s not just old age. She’s been like that for decades. She refuses to believe that what you don’t use, you lose.
So, on a whim, I pull out a small 50-piece puzzle of a Thomas Kincaid cottage that was a Christmas grab-bag gift, figuring that we could spend the afternoon slowly putting the pieces together – together. I had the thought that maybe I could get her interested in taking on a long-term puzzle project – something to keep those synapses firing – something we can keep working on cooperatively.
She surprised me on two fronts: She was willing to give it a try, and she had no idea what one is supposed to do with a jigsaw puzzle. So I explained how it works, and she assumed that we would be competing with each other and keeping score on how many pieces we each placed correctly. After I explained the notion of working cooperatively, figuring it out together, with no pressure for one person to out-do the other, she proceeded to assume that we needed to put the puzzle together in a designated amount of time. The point, for her, was the product, the finished puzzle.
And that’s when I had my AHA!. The process of putting the puzzle together is supposed to be fun. The point, the goal, of doing a jigsaw puzzle is as much the process as it is the product. My mother only values product: the diploma, the clean floor, the obedient well-dressed offspring, the approving nod of a stranger. I know that there are reasons for her obstructed view. But that’s not the point. The point is that we view life in very different ways. If I don’t enjoy the process, I don’t care about the product.
AHA. AHA. AHA.
The point, for me, is the process, feeling the form of the pieces, trying and failing, trying and succeeding, wondering at the pattern slowly forming on the board, keeping the big picture in mind while focusing on the parts in hand. Writing, cooking, dancing, knitting, conversing, designing, sewing, blogging, learning, debating, musing. I need to be engaged by the process, accepting that whatever product that might finally emerge does so as an organic outcome of that process.
No wonder I feel so unreal these days. Each of my days is filled with her unspoken list of expected products. My puzzle stays stuck in a box.
(Next Post: A day out of the box.)
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