Waiting in Haunted Attics

True love waits in haunted attics

And true love lives on

lollipops and crisps.

– Radiohead, “True Love Waits”

I have always loved these lyrics. Since I first heard them, they’ve gripped me in wonder. A metaphor I can almost taste – “haunted attics,” “lollipops and crisps.” But it’s a strange taste. It is not sour nor is it sweet. It simply is.

Love is one of those strangely terrible things. A petrifying paradox. The juxtaposition of things scary and things delightful. We simultaneously run from it and to it. It makes us do crazy things and we wish it to never leave.

We wish it to stay, but truthfully for some, was it ever there to begin with?

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I am doing a jigsaw puzzle with my sister. It’s an old puzzle; one that our parents bought when we were little to entertain themselves while we napped, a.k.a. solitary confinement for them. The box is dusty and disintegrating, but that’s what happens when it sits in the crawl space for the better part of 20 years. It is a simple photo – 3 hot air balloons floating over a country side in a cloudless sky- but all of those little blue sky pieces look the same.

Every great puzzle has a crux. It may not be the most important part of the puzzle, but it is the most challenging. A block of real estate that is exclusively one pattern and one color. The blue sky was our crux. Eventually, a pile of miscellaneous periwinkle pieces will pile up in the corner of the table, waiting to be assembled when there is nothing left to be placed. It’s a bit of a chore, but that won’t deter us. We get to work.

First the edges.

Then the colored pieces – the ones with the easily identifiable shapes.

I can tell this one is part of the basket of the balloon on the left.

This piece must be a part of the yellow balloon with the orange and purple diamonds on it.

My sister assembles the prairie. There are tiny cows dotting the hills and a little red barn.

Now, it’s time for the crux.

I have in front of me twelve pieces. Twelve glossy blue pieces.

About 30 more sit to my right.

I grab two at random. They clearly don’t fit. I move on to the next one…MATCH! Trial and error, trial and error. I continue on until I have a suitable palette of sky, ready to be transferred into the rest of the puzzle. My sister helps me scoop it up, and carefully we find where in the greater picture it belongs. And we continue assembling. Continuously, we try a piece and more often than not, it does not fit.

I think about the things in my life that do not “fit.”

The puzzle is almost done. But there are three spaces still to be filled and only two pieces left… My sister is down on her hands and knees, feeling the ground for the  missing piece. I search the box and look for my cat to see if she took it. It’s no where to be found.

My sister shrugs. She’s just impressed that in 20 years, only one piece has ever been lost. We decide to leave the puzzle on display for a few days on the dining room counter, but in a couple days, we’re having company over for dinner and the puzzle will have to be put away, but that’s ok.

…

As  I pack up the puzzle, the right corner of my lips cringes slightly downward in a slanting expression. It’s always a little sad to see your time and investment be broken up and dumped in a box. But company is coming soon and it has to be done.

I carry the box upstairs, all the way to the attic. It’s musty up there and is full of all the antiquey things you would expect. I return to the shelves that hold all the miscellaneous knick-knacks and boxes. And just before I put the box on the shelf, I see it. The missing puzzle piece. It had fallen out of the box, most likely years ago, and is now covered in a thick layer of dust. Gingerly, I pick it up between my first two fingers and my thumb and gently wipe off the dust. It’s most definitely the piece. It’s shape is perfect and the color prime.

The corners of my mouth turn upwards. All along, the piece had just been waiting in a haunted attic.