Home Planet: Finding the right words in game of life
They were sitting side by side, so pretty to look at, drinking cappuccinos out of big white crockery cups as wide as cereal bowls.
The bakery was full of people. Families, and what appeared to be entire neighborhoods of families, were gathered around the bigger tables while children buzzed around their parents like bees. Other people were sprawled on sofas or were tucked – like me – behind tiny tables in the corners.
It was another late spring Saturday that should have been warm and sunny. But outside the window the snow was falling again. No wonder the families had moved into the coffee shop.
Cabin fever was in the air around us. But the young couple, chairs pulled close together over cups of hot coffee, might just as well have been on an island. On their own planet. In their own universe.
They had the Saturday paper open on the table in front of them, folded to the crossword puzzle. His left arm was draped around her shoulders and his fingers lightly traced her upper arm. She leaned into him, her head just under his chin as she bent over the page.
I was struck by the way they focused on the empty blocks, reading the clues and discussing the possible answers before they filled in the blank spaces.
They looked so at home with one another, so familiar and content; oblivious to the chaos and clatter around them. I had the feeling that waking up, slipping into jeans and picking up a paper before going to the bakery was their weekend routine.
In my house, a house of females, the morning paper is pulled out before breakfast. The first one up turns to the puzzle and gets to work. But it is a catch-as-catch-can, arrangement. One of my daughters prefers to do as much as she can do alone before letting anyone else in on the game. Another makes tiny notes in the margins before she’ll commit and put a word or phrase into the squares.
I’m always good for the obscure answers; the ‘70s pop culture references or book titles and snippets of poetry. They call out clues while I make toast or spread peanut butter on a sandwich for a brown bag lunch. We rush out of the house, and the page waits on the table until we get home. At the end of the day, over a snack or homework, or a bowl of soup for supper, it is picked up again. More words are added, more questions asked before the paper is dropped – puzzle finished or unfinished – into the stack destined for recycling. And the next morning it starts all over again.
I sipped my tea and watched as the couple drank the last of their coffee and ate the last crumbs of their breakfast. She stretched and yawned. He tightened his arm and drew her even closer before they pushed away from the table and walked out the door leaving the unfinished puzzle behind.
They’re young and beautiful and in love. They have some of the answers now, but if they stay together and go on to make a life as a couple, maybe even a family, the Saturday morning crossword page is just a starting place. The day will come, a day when the puzzle isn’t a game and the questions can’t be recycled and put away and the answers aren’t there for the taking the next morning, when they’ll really have to sit down and put their heads together.
They’ll have to work to find the right words, then.