Beverly Jean Harris

I’ve been straightening and going through everything in my old family home. When it’s not too hot, I work in the attic, and one of the many things I found in its open cardboard boxes and bins was, from my childhood, a colorful wooden big-pieced jigsaw puzzle of a monkey wearing a hat. Sadly, when I first found it, most of its pieces were missing. But as I’m rummaging through all the stuff in the house, I will, now and then, in a shoebox of doll clothes or a bagful of toy cars, come across one of the distinctive wooden pieces, and I will run back to the attic to place the piece where it belongs. Bit by bit the puzzle is being completed. As an adult, I find the puzzle considerably more challenging than I found it as a child—it was easier when the pieces were right in front of me.