Puzzlement

            All day she sat in her recliner and worked acrostic puzzles.  She stopped to watch the evening news.  Then she picked up one of her puzzle books and said, “I haven’t done one of these in ages.”

            A few minutes later came the now-familiar complaint:  “These are stupid puzzles.  You put the letters of each answer in numbered boxes, and it spells out a sentence.  I can just go back here and read the sentence.”  (As far as I can tell, she has forgotten that she used to try to come up with the answers herself, not look them up and copy them down.  And reading the sentence used to be her favorite part.  But that was back when she solved the puzzle herself.)

            So right now she is reading Reminisce magazine.  Admittedly, she read this issue last week—I recycled it to the side of her chair earlier today when I noticed she was running out of reading material.  Sometimes magazines last for weeks, other times for minutes.  This must have been a minutes-type week. 

            I have become the caretaker of her history.  A letter from a dear friend of hers in Michigan puzzles her.  “When did I know her?” she asks.  “When you lived in Lowell,” I answer.  “When did I live in Lowell?” she quizzes me.  “From 1979 to 2001,” I reply.

            Pretty soon she will turn back to her acrostics.  With any luck she will enjoy them again.  After all, it’s happened more than once.