My family can tell you that I have never been a puzzle person. Spectator sport. He loves them, though, and had a great time playing one with his sister when she was in town. I knitted and kept them company.

My friend Holly told me a few years ago about Nautilus wooden puzzles and they have some gorgeous ones; I bought him one for Christmas a year or two ago.

He never touched it.

Who did he think he was, me?

But puzzles are a collective endeavor, he explained.

Two weeks ago they sent me a sale teaser that had this Grand Canyon in it. 253 pieces. Surely even I could manage to put up with that, and our anniversary was coming right up and it seemed the thing.

It takes four hands to hold them together when you move a connected bunch to the edges that he insists must be done first.

I thought the number of pieces meant it was going to be simple. I loved that some of the puzzle pieces looked like wildlife. What I hadn’t thought of was how much my brain was going to resist putting a bear in upside down and stop picturing it as a bear. Or a condor. Or whatever.

It took the two of us two nights, and I was mentally apologizing to my granddaughter for the 25 piece one I sent her from them: puzzles may be her favorite thing and she may be really good at them but four years is just not old enough to handle those wooden parts that don’t click in place but keep sliding around and separating with any movement.

He found a little octopus puzzle he’d bought himself that had no outer edges, just freeform. I contributed a very little. That took him two nights to finish, which surprised us both. Okay, maybe I’m not so bad after all.

I found the older Nautilus. It’s a bay, underwater and overwater, gorgeous, and we started in on it tonight.

I was surprised at how much faster it was going than the canyon.

That’s because you’re better at it, he said.

I guess all I’d had to do all along was to want to try.