Picture this

An ophthalmologist suggested to us years ago that our daughter, Shirley, would benefit from working jigsaw puzzles. She became very good at it and we started a Christmas tradition of giving her a puzzle each year. They began as large pieces of colorful cartoon characters or animals. Through the years we have progressed to a 1,000-piece puzzle of a black cat against a black background or an even larger one of toys in a toy shop shelf.

This year I hurriedly picked up a 500-piece puzzle that showed two lionesses against a beige background. Since she loves all felines I thought this would be a good one.

On New Year's Eve we decided this would be a perfect activity to keep us going until midnight with the help of two great-granddaughters. As we started turning the pieces face up we began to look for something to identify with, such as an eye of the lioness, a whisker, or something definite. The only thing we found after we got all the straight pieces forming the frame was a yellow boat with people in it. We looked at the picture on the box and there was no boat of any kind, nor was there any water.

A few more random pieces put together made us realize that we were not working on a picture of two attractive cats, but a huge waterfall. Even though the puzzle pieces were sealed in a bag inside a box that was sealed shut, somehow someone had put the wrong puzzle in the box.

We didn't get the puzzle done by midnight. We didn't even get it finished through New Year's Day, but finally on Jan. 2, we produced the picture of what turned out to be Niagara Falls.

As we worked we wondered about the family that thought they were putting a scene together and found two cats looking back at them.

Lester took a picture of the completed puzzle to put in the box when she stores it away so that the next puzzle solvers will have more clues. The worst thing was that except for water, sky and background trees there was nothing in the picture except the one very small boat. The water had slightly different tints in various parts of the puzzle but it was hard to even segregate the pieces by color.

This experience made me think back to my own life and the number of times I thought I was getting ready for a certain project to suddenly, or gradually, realize it wasn't turning out to be that at all.

I thought I was forming a picture of a farm family with a stay at home Mom.

What we created was a parsonage family with a Mom that worked at whatever job was available in each of the towns we lived in.

But now when I am looking back at the picture I can see where each piece did fit in to form a rather pleasing view. Each job gave me some experiences I used in future undertakings and now they are even giving me experiences to write about for you readers each week.

Without those odd pieces that didn't seem to fit into my life as I set out to form the scene, how would I ever have been able to think of things to share with you as I work on yet another job position in my Middle Age Plus Years? The box that held the pieces of my life may have been filled in error also.

Or maybe not. Anyway, it's a puzzle.