The puzzling is on again

November 21, 2020

The puzzling is on again

It was a tradition in my childhood: I was puzzling in the Christmas vacation each year. I had a big wooden board that I put in front of the fire place and I spent hours of my christmas vacation on my belly on the floor, puzzling away.

It seems a new tradition now: I am puzzling during pandemic lockdowns. At the start of the first lockdown I quickly ordered a puzzle and Kabouter and I quickly got the hang of it. Since a lot of these puzzles were all sold-out or with long delivery times, I was very relieved to be able to buy a couple of more. Up to early June we continued to puzzle with a lot of focus, but then the summer arrived, schools reopened and I was drowned into work so the puzzling stopped. In my perception it is more a winter activity anyhow.

But winter is approaching, we are condemned to staying at home a lot again. And I had been forward-looking and I had picked up one of my own childhood puzzles at my mom's home this summer and I had exchanged some of our lockdown puzzles with a friend. After all, everybody had apparently picked up puzzling during this pandemic.

And now in the new lockdown and the autumn vacation, it seemed like a good moment to restart puzzling again after a break of 5 months. I ordered some new ones and moved one to the Ardennes. This German winter/Christmas image seems very appropriate to the wintertime in the east of Belgium.

The children couldn't get started quickly enough but they first had to prove in a test again that they still mastered their puzzling skills.

Only then it was time to take the difficult task of destroying this puzzle that had cost me blood, sweat and tears in my youth and were I clearly not had the guts to destroy it after it was done. I'm sure splitting it carefully and putting it in the box undestroyed had also cost my father blood, sweat and tears. But I had to turn my heart into a stone and mix up all the pieces again.