Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2001-10-10 - 11:15 a.m.

1000 Pieces Interlocking

A letter from a friend has me musing about what I love best about being around children. I put these little quotes in here and there from my kids, when something catches and sticks because it's full of innocence or fancy or generosity, because children impress me and encourage me to see things in a way I've almost forgotten.

It's what they do with their puzzle pieces.

Each new piece they get handed, they start at the beginning again, looking at all the possibilities, eyes bright, roving over the whole layout, trying it in all the different ways. Because they haven't yet internalized the rules, how you have to find all the edge pieces first, especially the corner ones (of which there will be four and only four) and then you have to put all the sky pieces in a pile, see here, and the grass ones go in a pile over there, and here are all the pieces that look like they might have bits of zebra on them.

Kids don't know about that. Each new piece is a new piece, interesting in itself. It could go anywhere - it could fit here, or here even. It doesn't matter if it doesn't look like the picture on the box because nobody has yet explained that it has to.

And if you watch and listen, you will find yourself entranced by a zebra with a chrysanthemum for a head, thinking, How would it be if...?

Children come up with the interesting things, because they haven't learned as well as we have that there are not infinite possibilities, that someone at the factory simply cut up a photograph with a jig saw and it will only go together one way, the right way.

Later on they do learn that, I guess; we all did, somewhere along the line, didn't we? And they get a little tired, like we are, and they think maybe 1000 pieces is too much thinking for today, perhaps I will go and mow the lawn instead.

But before they get that part, they have all those colorful pieces and more arriving all the time to be admired and sorted and compared, and they say what they think because they haven't learned that rule yet, either. Which is why my youngest rides silently in the car, looking out the window, thumb in mouth, and then suddenly makes some stunning announcement about the nature of God, or how you can't touch nothing even if you try because there's always air, or some other thing that tells me that she's been turning over her pieces again, looking to see where they might go and how it looks when she puts them there. And I am reminded that I am blessed to be an observer in these years.

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