The Puzzle within a Puzzle at The Puzzle Factory

 

Jack he was a thinker, Jane she was a clerk.  Jane she worked at Trader Joe’s, he toiled at the headquarters of Enigma Puzzle in downtown Rochester, New York. Jack was a master of many trades, an expert at none. Jane she worked so she could live. For Jack work was his everything. That is a bit hyperbolic as Jane is the apple of his eye.  Jane never caught that vibe from Jack as,

Then they come home from work.
Sittin’ by the fire…
Radio just played a little classical music for these kids –

And Jack is checking his mobile device for texts and emails from his work.

Jack’s off today.

He probably did earlier and this may explain his detachment,

Jack’s work was a puzzle, an enigma to her. Jack worked in quality control at Enigma Puzzle. He worked on the loading dock and later manufacturing at Enigma while going to college. Upon graduation, he was asked to stay on in an increased capacity. Enigma liked to keep it in the family and additionally they did not have to sink their resources into finding another person to fill the position of (PBRM) Puzzle Buyer Relationship Manager.

Jack accepted this position even though Enigma only offered him a modest pay raise. It was more than enough for him to get by.  He drove a hard bargain as they gave him two weeks vacation to start. He asked them to throw in a bunch of stock options, which, at the time, were virtually useless.

Jack took pride in his work and emerged as an energetic burst to the management team at Enigma.  He was a determined problem solver and often worked on solving work problems once he could do his real thinking. That is when he came home from work. That was until he became the relationship manager at Enigma.

He had complete faith in the manufacturing and quality control at Enigma. It was the absolute attention to detail. It can take up to 10 weeks just to make a die for a puzzle. After leaving the die press, the sheets go through a breaker, which separates the puzzle pieces and drops them into their package, typically a cardboard box. He used to work in the packaging department and he has fleeting memories of getting home from work with a puzzle piece in his pocket. How it got there was an enigma to him. The last thing a buyer of Enigma Puzzles wants is to spend endless hours on a puzzle and find a piece of the puzzle missing. Putting together puzzles can, for the most part, is considered relaxing. Yet there is a certain adrenaline for those huddled over 500 pieces of random little cardboard cutouts. Similar to a hike in the woods, where the beauty is in the journey, there is a deep satisfaction that comes with completing the task.

It was Jack’s job to handle customer complaints when a customer was not completely satisfied with their puzzle.  Customers never complained about the quality of picture on the puzzle or the puzzle packaging About 11 percent of the customer complaints where that the puzzle was either too easy or in most cases it was down right far too difficult.   However the bane of his existence was the other 89 percent. Yes, these were the customers missing puzzle pieces.  He did receive occasional inquiries from customers who discovered extra pieces upon completion of their puzzles. The nature of these calls was worth noting as these respondents seemingly were calling out of concern for the fellowship of puzzle solvers. They recognized that if they had too many pieces there had to be other people missing pieces to the little table top challenge in their life. They were worried about their next purchase.

Then there were the customers who were missing a piece or multiple pieces to their puzzles. There were so many unknowns once a puzzle entered into the puzzle solvers domain. If one has ever had a puzzle piece stuck to the underside of their elbow they can surely understand? Puzzles live on a table in a far off vacation home The puzzle solvers are intent on solving the puzzle as other guests try to connect border pieces with pieces that do not contain a straight edge.  People give puzzles as gifts to people who have cats. Yet, the receivers of the puzzle are naive enough to attempt solving the puzzle.  Many mistakes have been made in an attempt to solve a puzzle. And that is where the connection becomes murky.

Jane she comes home from work, and she was surprised to see Jack, comfortably at home, reading a thick novel on the couch. They had painstakingly purchased the couch late last week at Jack’s insistence as they had saved all their monies.

“Hey Jack what are you doing home so early?”  She asked in a pitch a tad bit higher than her normal conversation voice.

“Babe you knew I took the day off.”

Jane put her keys on the kitchen shelf ignoring his response.

Jack picked up on this and it made him feel a tad bit worse than he already felt. He could not pinpoint why this made him feel uncomfortable.

He kissed her briefly and she returned his kiss quickly and half-heartedly. He walked to the window and noticed a car driving out of their driveway.  He listened to the stones flying as the car pivoted out of the driveway.

Jack turned to his wife and looked her squarely in the eyes and she held his gaze. “Honey I don’t know what is going wrong with me. I seemed to have lost my passion. I don’t know if I can do this anymore.,” he said to her in an understated tone.

She remained silent for a few seconds, and did not utter a single word.  Jack he did the same, as he had no other words to say. A tear slowly slid down Jane’s left cheek and slowly dripped down the indent in her chin, landing squarely on her big toe.

Suddenly, there was a gentle knock on the door and Jane flinched noticeably.  Jack calmly walked to the front door. The room seemed much bigger to him. Before he could get to the front door, the door burst opened suddenly.  Jane took refuge on the couch wanting to cry herself to sleep.  Then in walked Jack’s colleague from work carrying a large bottle of port.

She placed the bottle on the dining room table and looked at Jane resplendent on the sofa.

“Where do you keep your wine glasses?

Jane thought for a second, and she had no idea who was his woman.  But she answered, from a fog,  “Right above the dishwasher, the cabinets have glass windows.”

The svelte professionally dressed, attractive woman, returned from the kitchen with three sparkling clean wine glasses.

“Pour me a tall one.” Jane spouted. As she stood up from the sofa and then added, “And who are you?”

“I take it your are Jane. I hear so much about you.  I am your husbands co-worker, well some would call me his boss,” she said as she gently handed her a tall goblet of the port.

Jane finished her grog quickly, took the bottle from the visitor’s hand and poured herself another large glass of Port.

“Hey Sunshine what are you doing here.” Jack asked as he gave her a warm embrace.

“You call your boss Sunshine?” Jane said directing her query directly toward her husband.

“Yes we are on a first name basis. ”

Jack nodded and quizzically winked seductively back to his wife.

Sunshine, deciding to cut through the perceived chaos, marched forward. “Jack I am concerned. You threatened to quit your job yesterday and today you took your first sick leave since you have been with the company. ”

“Isn’t that what sick leave is for?

Sunshine answered back with only a sardonic knowing smile.

“Yes I told you I seemed to have lost my passion. I don’t know if I can do this anymore.”

“Yes you did repeatedly”

His wife remained lounged on the couch, drinking Tho port, rather quickly.

Jack went into a long-winded explanation as to what was going through his mind. He told his boss about his frustrations of yesterday, and how it had built up the last few months. In the puzzle business, the customer was always right to an abnormal degree.  All he did was answer questions from customers who had puzzles that were missing pieces. His response back to the customer every single time was that he would send them another puzzle. He thought this policy was counter-productive. Why could they not send back only the missing pieces?

Jane, while finishing the last of her second tumbler, stretched her legs on the couch and tried to allow her husband’s poor communication to sink in. She realized that he was not referring to her when he said that he was done. What really startled her was how careless he was with his words. He wasn’t even remotely aware that living in his enigmatic little world he could not find some quality time for her. She could not remember their last attempt at intimacy.  She went back to drinking her port with a newfound sense of purpose. The thought crossed her mind that she could have handled the situation better. That was her issue.

His boss, lost in thought for a few seconds, reached into her purse and palmed a puzzle piece in her hand. It was a piece obviously from the middle of some puzzle.

She placed the puzzle piece on the table right in front Jack. It was difficult to read the design due to glare from the overhead light. She walked across the room like she had been there before, and turned off the overhead light using a light switch next to the kitchen. It didn’t turn off the overhead light.

Jane was now snoring loudly on the couch.

Somehow Jane flipped a switch on the a little remote and the overhead lights dimmed slowly.  It probably was pure coincidence, as Jane preferred the more elegant light from the lamps in the room. Her and Jack had shopped for them together.

His boss waltzed back to the table holding a single piece of a jigsaw puzzle. One could imagine the puzzle piece missing the rest of his 999 brothers and sisters who were part of the puzzle.

“Please describe this puzzle piece to me so that it can be uniquely identified. I realize the customer doesn’t have the actual puzzle piece. Worse yet, all they have is an indentation on a decorated piece of cardboard. ”

Without hesitation Jack responded,  “The piece has the number 237 printed on the back. ”

“No it doesn’t.” said his boss nervously; suddenly sensing she had been down this road before.

“But it should.”

It was on this day; Jack worked himself out of a job. It didn’t happen overnight but eventually they implemented a numbering system on the back of the puzzle pieces and they no longer had to ship back an entire puzzle back to their customers.

Jack was no longer needed, well so he thought.

This invention of a single number on the back of each puzzle piece blew the puzzle industry to pieces.  Enigma puzzle became the target of buyouts from much larger entertainment companies.

Jack was now needed in much bigger capacity, well so he thought. He thought this to himself while mulling over his options.

His job now became a large puzzle to him.  His boss laid out the enigma to him that quizzical day in his living room. The answer to what piece was missing from a puzzle was not apparent to the clientele who were one piece short of a complete puzzle. Enigma Puzzle, it its rush to move the numbered puzzle configuration to market had not researched the ramification of such a move, They had added a detailed additions to the instructional manual that comes with a puzzle. Jack even worked on the composition and completeness of the note.

Still Jack received almost the same structured calls as before and it increased exponentially the time he spent on the phone with each customer. After a weeks worth of phone calls, and meetings where he excluded the focus groups, he came to the conclusion that people who bought puzzles simply did not read the directions.  Jack had to explain the numbers were on the back of the puzzle and ask the customer for the numbers contained on the left, right, top and bottom of the missing pieces.  Usually by the time the caller got back to the phone they had four puzzle pieces forgetting to note their locations. Still that was enough to solve the identity of the missing piece. As foreshadowed, they never had computerized the numbers on the back of the puzzles. Yes, for a few months, they relied on large puzzle like patterns hung from each wall in the office.

Jack spent his days quizzically, solving puzzles about puzzles from puzzled puzzle solvers.

He was convinced he could not do this anymore. Admittedly he seemed to have lost his way in the enigmatic puzzle industry. Every puzzle he solved seemed to lead to another puzzle. It was the puzzle within a puzzle, in a bad metaphorical way.

A few day earlier, after an extra long frustrating day, Jack walked down to the printing department half expecting them to be home for the day. Much to his surprise Lou was still working and he suspected Lou would grant him a favor. Jack had pretty much set him up for his first interview at the Puzzle factory.

“Lou I need your help on a project that’s a bit exploratory in nature.

“Sure Jack how can I help you.” Lou closed a few open windows on the large screens on his desk.

“I emailed you a picture about ten minutes ago.” Jack said with little context. “Could you put a puzzle together using our basic configuration this week?”

“Those make great gifts, don’t they?  The picture was a sun-splashed photo of Jack and Jane on the deck of the brewery overlooking the falls. Jane looked radiant in the photo, Jack the same, yet a bit disheveled. It was the look in her eyes that he loved about this photo. It was a reminder that that she truly loved him. It was another Kodak moment. Then he was reminded that nobody worked there anymore. He looked again at the look in her eyes flashing back at the camera. He could not even remember who had taken the photo.

Today on this this especially snowy day, Jack ended up taking the bus home an hour later than usual. Jack so consumed by the self-inflicted drama of his work, had failed to notice a snowstorm was hitting the city pretty hard. He did not recognize a single person on the bus. However there in the second row sat Lovely Warren, the distinguished mayor of Rochester New York.  As the bus slowly made it way from the newly constructed transit center, Jack took the window seat next to her.  And yes the combination of the snowstorm and the festive nature of the mayor they filled their time chatting away on the bus.

The mayor told him little snippets of the day in the life as mayor. She came across as somebody who cared for the people of Rochester. The city has its share of problems and she told him her goal was to make everybody’s life better.  She had been taking buses all day long to see what it was like for people in the city to ride the buses. Most importantly, what it was like for school age children to ride the bus.  She echoed that the more she knew about something, the more she didn’t know.

It took the bus 40 minutes to make it up Monroe to his bus stop near his home. The mayor remained on the bus when he stood to get off the bus. He gave her a silent fist bump and waved a thumbs up from the sidewalk. The silence of the snow was deafening as he walked the four blocks back to his house. It was a subtle euphoric walk. In that little forty-minute bus ride, he felt a little more encouraged by the human spirit. It tickled him that city officials had the same frustrations as he during a normal day.  She was the first female mayor of Rochester and the second who was African American.  He thought of his day-to-day struggles, and it didn’t seem to matter all that much. The mayor felt like a kind everyday person.

He walked up the front steps of their house and he was surprised to find the front steps recently cleared of snow. That was not your typical Jane In fact; Jane was reluctant to do much of anything since the night of his bosses visit. It was a simmering argument they had never got to bottom of.  Jack took a moment to watch the snowflakes flutter in the streetlights across the street. The utter silence of falling snow was always an unexpected smattering of brilliance.

Jack for the first time in a few weeks felt an unexpected calm as he walked into the house. He savored the moment, as tranquility can be fleeting.  He found Jane sitting at the kitchen table. A few small candles flickered politely in the room. She seemed focused, oblivious to the building storm. Jack was happy to be home from work, and his Jane, looked radiant and delicately beautiful in the refracted light.

He found her completely immersed in putting a puzzle together. She was more than halfway through with the border pieces and had completed a few pieces from the body of the puzzle.

He wondered to himself “Was this a fault of the manufacturing process. Nobody wants to get a puzzle that is partially completed.

Jack kissed her warmly and walked into the kitchen and queued up a little classical music. The radio it did play.

He walked back into the dining room and kissed her warmly once again. He watched her fumble happily with the puzzle pieces. He sat next to her and cherished her joy in seeing the puzzle come together. She enthusiastically returned his kiss.

And he whispered into her ear. “Sweet Jane”

“We have tons of options.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Puzzle within a Puzzle at The Puzzle Factory

Jack he was a thinker, Jane she was a Clerk.  Jane she worked at Trader Joe’s, he toiled at the headquarters of Enigma Puzzle in downtown Rochester, New York. Jack was a master of many trades, an expert at none. Jane she worked so she could live. For Jack work was his everything. That is a bit hyperbolic as Jane is the apple of his eye.  Jane never caught that vibe from Jack as,

Then they come home from work.
Sittin’ by the fire…
Radio just played a little classical music for these kids –

And Jack is checking his mobile device for texts and emails from his work.

Jack’s off today.

He probably did earlier and this may explain his detachment,

Jack’s work was a puzzle, an enigma to her. Jack worked in quality control at Enigma Puzzle. He worked on the loading dock and later manufacturing at Enigma while going to college. Upon graduation, he was asked to stay on in an increased capacity. Enigma liked to keep it in the family and additionally they did not have to sink their resources into finding another person to fill the position of (PBRM) Puzzle Buyers Relationship Manager.

Jack accepted this position even though Enigma only offered him a modest pay raise. It was more than enough for him to get by.  He drove a hard bargain as they gave him two weeks vacation to start. He asked them to throw in a bunch of stock options, which, at the time, were virtually useless.

Jack took pride in his work and emerged as an energetic burst to the management team at Enigma.  He was a determined problem solver and often worked on solving work problems once he could do his real thinking. That is when he came home from work. That was until he became the relationship manager at Enigma.

He had complete faith in the manufacturing and quality control at Enigma. It was the absolute attention to detail. It can take up to 10 weeks just to make a die for a puzzle. After leaving the die press, the sheets go through a breaker, which separates the puzzle pieces and drops them into their package, typically a cardboard box. He used to work in the packaging department and he has fleeting memories of getting home from work with a puzzle piece in his pocket. How it got there was an enigma to him. The last thing a buyer of Enigma Puzzles wants is to spend endless hours on a puzzle and find a piece of the puzzle missing. Putting together puzzles can, for the most part, is considered relaxing. Yet there is a certain adrenaline for those huddled over 500 pieces of random little cardboard cutouts. Similar to a hike in the woods, where the beauty is in the journey, there is a deep satisfaction that comes with completing the task.

It was Jack’s job to handle customer complaints when a customer was not completely satisfied with their puzzle.  Customers never complained about the quality of picture on the puzzle or the puzzle packaging About 11 percent of the customer complaints there that the puzzle was either too easy or in most cases it was down right far too difficult.   However the bane of his existence was the other 89 percent. Yes, these were the customers missing puzzle pieces.  He did receive occasional inquiries from customers who discovered extra pieces upon completion of their puzzles. The nature of these calls was worth noting as these respondents seemingly were calling out of concern for the fellowship of puzzle solvers. They recognized that if they had too many pieces there had to be other people missing pieces to the little table top challenge in their life. They were worried about their next purchase.

Then there were the customers who were missing a piece or multiple pieces to their puzzles. There were so many unknowns once a puzzle entered into the puzzle solvers domain. If one has ever had a puzzle piece stuck to the underside of their elbow they can surely understand? Puzzles live on a table in a far off vacation home The puzzle solvers are intent on solving the puzzle as other guests try to connect border pieces with pieces that do not contain a straight edge.  People give puzzles as gifts to people who have cats. Yet, the receivers of the puzzle are naive enough to attempt solving the puzzle.  Many mistakes have been made in an attempt to solve a puzzle. And that is where the connection becomes murky.

Jane she comes home from work, and she was surprised to see Jack, comfortably at home, reading a thick novel on the couch. They had painstakingly purchased the couch late last week at Jack’s insistence as they had saved all their monies.

“Hey Jack what are you doing home so early?”  She asked in a pitch a tad bit higher than her normal conversation voice.

“Babe you knew I took the day off.”

Jane put her keys on the kitchen shelf ignoring his response.

Jack picked up on this and it made him feel a tad bit worse than he already felt. He could not pinpoint why this made him feel uncomfortable.

He kissed her briefly and she returned his kiss quickly and half-heartedly. He walked to the window and noticed a car driving out of their driveway.  He listened to the stones flying as the car pivoted out of the driveway.

Jack turned to his wife and looked her squarely in the eyes and she held his gaze. “Honey I don’t know what is going wrong with me. I seemed to have lost my passion. I don’t know if I can do this anymore.,” he said to her in an understated tone.

She remained silent for a few seconds, and did not utter a single word.  Jack he did the same, as he had no other words to say. A tear slowly slid down Jane’s left cheek and slowly dripped down the indent in her chin, landing squarely on her big toe.

Suddenly, there was a gentle knock on the door and Jane flinched noticeably.  Jack calmly walked to the front door. The room seemed much bigger to him. Before he could get to the front door, the door burst opened suddenly.  Jane took refuge on the couch wanting to cry herself to sleep.  Then in walked Jack’s colleague from work carrying a large bottle of port.

She placed the bottle on the dining room table and looked at Jane resplendent on the sofa.

“Where do you keep your wine glasses?

Jane thought for a second, and she had no idea who was his woman.  But she answered, from a fog,  “Right above the dishwasher, the cabinets have glass windows.”

The svelte professionally dressed, attractive woman, returned from the kitchen with three sparkling clean wine glasses.

“Pour me a tall one.” Jane spouted. As she stood up from the sofa and then added, “And who are you?”

“I take it your are Jane. I hear so much about you.  I am your husbands co-worker, well some would call me his boss,” she said as she gently handed her a tall goblet of the Port.

Jane finished her Port quickly, took the bottle from the visitor’s hand and poured herself another large glass of Port.

“Hey Sunshine what are you doing here.” Jack asked as he gave her a warm embrace.

“You call your boss Sunshine?” Jane said directing her query directly toward her husband.

“Yes we are on a first name basis. ”

Jack nodded and quizzically winked seductively back to his wife.

Sunshine, deciding to cut through the perceived chaos, marched forward. “Jack I am concerned. You threatened to quit your job yesterday and today you took your first sick leave since you have been with the company. ”

“Isn’t that what sick leave is for?

Sunshine answered back with only a sardonic knowing smile.

“Yes I told you I seemed to have lost my passion. I don’t know if I can do this anymore.”

“Yes you did repeatedly”

His wife remained lounged on the couch, drinking Port, rather quickly.

Jack went into a long-winded explanation as to what was going through his mind. He told his boss about his frustrations of yesterday, and how it had built up the last few months. In the puzzle business, the customer was always right to an abnormal degree.  All he did was answer questions from customers who had puzzles that were missing pieces. His response back to the customer every single time was that he would send then back another puzzle. He thought this policy was counter-productive. Why could they not send back only the missing pieces?

Jane, while finishing the last of her second tumbler, stretched her legs on the couch and tried to allow her husband’s poor communication to sink in. She realized that he was not referring to her when he said that he was done. What really startled her was how careless he was with his words. He wasn’t even remotely aware that living in his enigmatic little world he could not find some quality time for her. She could not remember their last attempt at intimacy.  She went back to drinking her port with a newfound sense of purpose. The thought cross her mind that she could have handled the situation better. That was her issue.

His boss, lost in thought for a few seconds, reached into her purse and palmed a puzzle piece in her hand. It was a piece obviously from the middle of some puzzle.

She placed the puzzle piece on the table right in front Jack. It was difficult to read the design due to glare from the overhead light. She walked across the room like she had been there before, and turned off the overhead light using a light switch next to the kitchen. It didn’t turn off the overhead light.

Jane was now snoring loudly on the couch.

Somehow Jane flipped a switch on the a little remote and the overhead lights dimmed slowly.  It probably was pure coincidence, as Jane preferred the more elegant light from the lamps in the room. Her and Jack had shopped for them together.

His boss waltzed back to the table holding a single piece of a jigsaw puzzle. One could imagine the puzzle piece missing the rest of his 999 brothers and sisters who were part of the puzzle.

“Please describe this puzzle piece to me so that it can be uniquely identified. I realize the customer doesn’t have the actual puzzle piece. Worse yet, all they have is an indentation on a decorated piece of cardboard. ”

Without hesitation Jack responded,  “The piece has the number 237 printed on the back. ”

“No it doesn’t.” said his boss nervously; suddenly sensing she had been down this road before.

“But it should.”

It was on this day; Jack worked himself out of a job. It didn’t happen overnight but eventually they implemented a numbering system on the back of the puzzle pieces and they no longer had to ship back an entire puzzle back to their customers.

Jack was no longer needed, well so he thought.

This invention of a single number on the back of each puzzle piece blew the puzzle industry to pieces.  Enigma puzzle became the target of buyouts from much larger entertainment companies.

Jack was now needed in much bigger capacity, well so he thought. He thought this to himself while mulling over his options.

His job now became a large puzzle to him.  His boss laid out the enigma to him that quizzical day in his living room. The answer to what piece was missing from a puzzle was not apparent to the clientele who were one piece short of a complete puzzle. Enigma Puzzle, it its rush to move the numbered puzzle configuration to market had not researched the ramification of such a move, They had added a detailed additions to the instructional manual that comes with a puzzle. Jack even worked on the composition and completeness of the note.

Still Jack received almost the same structured calls as before and it increased exponentially the time he spent on the phone with each customer. After a weeks worth of phone calls, and meetings where he excluded the focus groups, he came to the conclusion that people who bought puzzles simply did not read the directions.  Jack had to explain the numbers were on the back of the puzzle and ask the customer for the numbers contained on the left, right, top and bottom of the missing pieces.  Usually by the time the caller got back to the phone they had four puzzle pieces forgetting to note their locations. Still that was enough to solve the identity of the missing piece. As foreshadowed, they never had computerized the numbers on the back of the puzzles. Yes, for a few months, they relied on large puzzle like patterns hung from each wall in the office.

Jack spent his days quizzically, solving puzzles about puzzles from puzzled puzzle solvers.

He was convinced he could not do this anymore. Admittedly he seemed to have lost his way in the enigmatic puzzle industry. Every puzzle he solved seemed to lead to another puzzle. It was the puzzle within a puzzle, in a bad metaphorical way.

A few day earlier, after an extra long frustrating day, Jack walked down to the printing department half expecting them to be home for the day. Much to his surprise Lou was still working and he suspected Lou would grant him a favor. Jack had pretty much set him up for his first interview at the Puzzle factory.

“Lou I need your help on a project that’s a bit exploratory in nature.

“Sure Jack how can I help you.” Lou closed a few open windows on the large screens on his desk.

“I emailed you a picture about ten minutes ago.” Jack said with little context. “Could you put a puzzle together using our basic configuration this week?”

“Those make great gifts, don’t they?  The picture was a sun-splashed photo of Jack and Jane on the deck of the brewery overlooking the falls. Jane looked radiant in the photo, Jack the same, yet a bit disheveled. It was the look in her eyes that he loved about this photo. It was a reminder that that she truly loved him. It was another Kodak moment. Then he was reminded that nobody worked there anymore. He looked again at the look in her eyes flashing back at the camera. He could not even remember who had taken the photo.

Today on this this especially snowy day, Jack ended up taking the bus home an hour later than usual. Jack so consumed by the self-inflicted drama of his work, had failed to notice a snowstorm was hitting the city pretty hard. He did not recognize a single person on the bus. However there in the second row sat Lovely Warren, the distinguished mayor of Rochester New York.  As the bus slowly made it way from the newly constructed transit center, Jack took the window seat next to her.  And yes the combination of the snowstorm and the festive nature of the mayor they filled their time chatting away on the bus.

The mayor told him little snippets of the day in the life as mayor. She came across as somebody who cared for the people of Rochester. The city has its share of problems and she told him her goal was to make everybody’s life better.  She had been taking buses all day long to see what it was like for people in the city to ride the buses. Most importantly, what it was like for school age children to ride the bus.  She echoed that the more she knew about something, the more she didn’t know.

It took the bus 40 minutes to make it up Monroe to his bus stop near his home. The mayor remained on the bus when he stood to get off the bus. He gave her a silent fist bump and waved a thumbs up from the sidewalk. The silence of the snow was deafening as he walked the four blocks back to his house. It was a subtle euphoric walk. In that little forty-minute bus ride, he felt a little more encouraged by the human spirit. It tickled him that city officials had the same frustrations as he during a normal day.  She was the first female mayor of Rochester and the second who was African American.  He thought of his day-to-day struggles, and it didn’t seem to matter all that much. The mayor felt like a kind everyday person.

He walked up the front steps of their house and he was surprised to find the front steps recently cleared of snow. That was not your typical Jane In fact; Jane was reluctant to do much of anything since the night of his bosses visit. It was a simmering argument they had never got to bottom of.  Jack took a moment to watch the snowflakes flutter in the streetlights across the street. The utter silence of falling snow was always an unexpected smattering of brilliance.

Jack for the first time in a few weeks felt an unexpected calm as he walked into the house. He savored the moment, as tranquility can be fleeting.  He found Jane sitting at the kitchen table. A few small candles flickered politely in the room. She seemed focused, oblivious to the building storm. Jack was happy to be home from work, and his Jane, looked radiant and delicately beautiful in the refracted light.

He found her completely immersed in putting a puzzle together. She was more than halfway through with the border pieces and had completed a few pieces from the body of the puzzle.

He wondered to himself “Was this a fault of the manufacturing process. Nobody wants to get a puzzle that is partially completed.

Jack kissed her warmly and walked into the kitchen and queued up a little classical music. The radio it did play.

He walked back into the dining room and kissed her warmly once again. He watched her fumble happily with the puzzle pieces. He sat next to her and cherished her joy in seeing the puzzle come together. She enthusiastically returned his kiss.

And he whispered into her ear. “Sweet Jane”

“We have tons of options.”