Twelve Hands on the Puzzle

My mother-in-law brought a 2,000-piece jigsaw puzzle to our house for Thanksgiving. It was a picture of a Venetian canal, mostly water and sky. Everyone groaned.

It sat on the dining room card table for four days. People wandered past and found a piece or two. My nephew found the edges. My husband claimed the gondolas. The teenagers pretended they weren't interested and then stayed up until one in the morning on the sky. My father-in-law, who doesn't talk much, sat at it for hours, humming, and finally put the last piece of the bell tower in on Sunday afternoon.

We all clapped. He blushed. Then my mother-in-law produced a second puzzle from her bag: 3,000 pieces, a field of sunflowers. "For Christmas," she said.

We're already arguing about who gets to do the edges.