Our family has an eighty eight day streak. We have collectively finished the New York Times Crossword puzzle, with people logging in as time zones and day jobs allow. Each of us have our areas of expertise. Still I disappoint myself by coming up empty with clues about fabric or the Bible, those topics I fancy myself facile with. Then I will surprise all of us by chiming in with an answer to a question regarding baseball or beer. 

 

Synergy catches when responses click, and letters slip into place. It keeps us coming back the next morning. I have learned things, like who won the NASCAR, or a big name in tractors. Well, most of those particulars evaporate by the next day, being replaced by fresh curiosity about the synonym for peeve. 

 

It often occupies us for just shy of two hours, with people trading off. Our quickest victory was under an hour. 

 

I notice a part of my brain reengaging. The sluggishness of the past year has hindered things like novelty, replacing it with its evil twin uncertainty. We leap into clever word plays and nuanced suggestions offered as crumbs leading us to a prize comprised of ten letters with two s's in the sixth and seventh places, ending with n.

 

Then there is the blink of success. 

 

Congratulations!!

 

It's a satisfying conclusion to our combined efforts. 

 

In a prayer meeting last week some of us spoke about the divisiveness cleaving the country. Asked God for healing. I announced my unwillingness to argue with people whose stance is on the other side of the barricade. Another woman had recently lowered her defenses enough to share a meal with friends whose ideology is incongruous with her own. It worked, at least as can be measured by decibels and hot air. Her story softened me, like water on a clump of brown sugar that has calcified in the back of the pantry. As she described the dinner party I awoke to possibilities. Maybe my own inflexibility was part of the grid keeping us apart. Hearing her describe how it felt to be vulnerable filled in the spaces of my own grip on defenses. Maybe I could listen too.

 

It all looked like a puzzle... finding ways to connect with people can seem unsolvable. Could my inquiry last for, say, eighty eight days?  Even an hour of curiosity would be an improvement. 

 

I will keep my eyes open for cookie crumbs. And an antonym for peeve.