A Moment in Time - Puzzling on the Subway

A Moment in Time

The Joys of Jigsaw Puzzling on the Subway

 
One of the ways I pass time during my commute to work on the subway is to play games on my phone. About ten years ago, I became bored with the usual games I played. Looking for something different, I searched the App Store for jigsaw puzzles and was amazed to find many jigsaw apps. I became obsessed with jigsaw puzzles. Then, one day, while on the Uptown A train going home in the evening, a most extraordinary thing happened while I was sitting there doing a puzzle, oblivious to everything around me.
The train was packed with people standing jammed up against the doors. My commute is about forty-five minutes on a good day, and I was lucky enough to get a seat when I got on and settled into the journey with my iPad and a jigsaw puzzle on the screen. I was sitting at the end of a bench next to the door. A mother and son, he was about five or six years old, boarded the train. The mother’s back was against the door, and her little boy stood in front of her. I noticed that he kept staring at what I was doing. “Do you like playing puzzles?” I asked him. He did not respond, but his eyes lit up. So, I asked, “Would you like to do a puzzle?” still, he did not speak. I stopped the puzzle I was working on and found some children’s puzzles on the app and set one of them up using eight to ten pieces. The train we were on had a long stretch where it ran express, so this little boy and I had a good length of time to puzzle. We probably did four puzzles altogether.
I suggested he pick out the next puzzle, and he chose one with three little kittens. “Do you like kittens?” I asked, and he nodded his head. The amazing and most beautiful thing happened as we played puzzles. The passengers standing and sitting around us got involved, cheering him on and saying what a smart boy he was and what a good job he did when he put a piece in the right place and completed a puzzle.
The boy and his mother got off the train at their stop, and I went back to the puzzle I had been working on before. It was such a simple encounter and yet so profound. It happened at a time when the whole country was at loggerheads with itself. That was especially true in large cities where people are packed together. This little moment in time, at least for me, was like an explosion of beauty and sharing and even community. For a moment, my faith was restored, and I felt human. That moment stays with me always. The boy must be in high school now, and I wonder if he realizes how much he brightened my day and made life just a little bit better for me.