Jamie Collins Facebook ad: “Read this if you know someone who puzzles often”

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I almost stopped buying my mom puzzles. She never opened them. Then I saw the real reason, and it broke my heart a little. Let me explain, because I got this wrong for three years, and I'll bet some of you are getting it wrong right now. My mom is 68. She's been a puzzler my whole life. Growing up, there was always one going on the dining room table. A thousand pieces of some Italian village or a lighthouse in a storm. It was just part of the house. Like the smell of coffee. So every Christmas and every birthday, I bought her puzzles. Good ones. The nice brands. The 1,500-piece ones she used to love. Then a few years ago, I was looking for wrapping paper in her hall closet, and I found them. Eleven puzzles. Stacked on a shelf. Still in the shrink wrap. Some of them were gifts from me going back three Christmases. Never opened. I stood there holding one and felt genuinely stupid. Like I'd been mailing letters to an address she'd moved out of. My first thought was the sad, obvious one. She's 68. She's slowing down. People drift away from things. I even said it to my husband on the drive home. "I think Mom's kind of done with puzzles. I should get her something else this year." I'm so glad I didn't. Because that spring, I spent a week at my parents' house helping my dad recover from knee surgery. A full week, just watching how their days actually work. And on day three, I saw something that rearranged everything I thought I knew. Tuesday morning, my mom stood at the kitchen counter with her reading glasses on, looking at the wall calendar. Really studying it. Then she went to the closet. Passed right over the big puzzles, the beautiful ones, the ones she used to love. And pulled out a small 500-piece she'd bought on clearance. I asked her about it. Just casual. "Not in the mood for a big one?" And she said, without even looking up, "Oh, your father has his card game Thursday, and we've got the Hendersons on Sunday. A big one would be in the way." In the way. She said it the same way you'd mention the weather. Totally normal. Not a trace of complaint in it. That night I couldn't sleep, so I did the thing you do. I sat up in the guest room adding it up. The dining table is the only big surface in that house. A 1,500-piece puzzle takes her two to three weeks, the way she likes to do it. Slowly. In the evenings. Savoring it. Which means starting one costs her three weeks of the family table. Three weeks of my dad's card game moving. Three weeks of no dinner guests. Three weeks of saying "just eat in the kitchen" and feeling like her hobby was an inconvenience everyone was politely tolerating. So she stopped paying that price. Quietly. Without announcing it. Without even deciding it, really. She didn't stop loving puzzles. She started rationing them. The small ones she was lukewarm about, because they finish fast. Only during empty stretches on the calendar. Never before the holidays. Never when anyone might visit. And the eleven puzzles in the closet? Those weren't evidence she'd lost interest. Those were the ones she actually wanted. Saved for a "good time" that the calendar never gave her. The part that got me the most? I do the same thing. I put my own stuff last on the list and call it being flexible. I learned it from somewhere, and I was standing in her kitchen looking right at where. When I told my sister, she went quiet on the phone for a second. Then she said, "That's why she tore down the puzzle last Easter. She finished it in like two days before we all showed up. I thought she was just excited." She wasn't excited. She was racing us. My sister's a hospice nurse, and she said something I keep thinking about. She said the people she cares for almost never talk about the big things they gave up. It's the small daily things. And they always frame it the same way. "I didn't want to be a bother." Our mom had been not-being-a-bother for years. Right in front of us. So I decided the gift that year wasn't going to be puzzle number twelve for the closet. It was going to be whatever removed the price she was paying. I'll be honest, my first attempt at research almost sent me backward. I looked at the puzzle boards on Amazon, and they all looked the same. Dark wood-ish finish, drawers, five stars, $120 to $160. So I did what I do with anything I buy at this point. I skipped the five-star reviews and read the one-stars. Same failures over and over. Boards warping in months. Drawer magnets falling off. Fake wood grain printed on pressboard. And weight. So many reviews from daughters like me saying their mom couldn't move the thing without help. That last one mattered. A board my mom can't lift alone isn't a solution. It's the dining table problem with a receipt attached. There was one more complaint I didn't understand at first. People kept saying they hated the felt surface, because you can't slide pieces on it. I asked my mom about felt without telling her why, and she made a face and said, "You can't move your sections. You have to pick everything up like it's going to shatter." Apparently that's half the joy for real puzzlers. Building a little section off to the side, then sliding it into place. Felt kills it. So my list got short. Real construction that won't sag. Drawers that actually hold closed when it's carried. Light enough for a 68-year-old to move alone. A smooth surface that lets sections slide but keeps pieces put. And a cover, so a half-done puzzle can disappear and come back. Almost nothing passed. What did was the Nova Board from Puzzle Nova. I'm not going to pretend it was the cheapest option. It wasn't. But I'd already learned what the cheap version of this gift becomes. It becomes a shelf ornament, right next to eleven unopened puzzles. Here's what it actually changed, and this is the part I wish I could show you instead of tell you. My mom starts a puzzle now whenever she wants. Not when the calendar allows it. Because when my dad's card game rolls around, she slides the cover on, picks the whole board up with one hand, and sets it on the sideboard. The puzzle stays exactly as she left it. Every sorted piece still in its drawer. The magnets actually hold. I've watched her carry it tilted and nothing moved. The dining table went back to being the dining table. And her puzzle stopped being a negotiation. The first thing she opened after her birthday? A 1,500-piece from the closet shelf. One I gave her in 2022. She called me when she finished it. Six weeks, she took. Six slow, unhurried weeks, because for the first time in years there was no reason to rush and no one to clear out for. She said, "I forgot what it's like to just leave it out." I hung up the phone and cried a little in my car. Over a puzzle board. But it wasn't really about the board. So here's what I want to say to anyone with a puzzler in their life and a stack of unopened boxes somewhere in their house. Don't read that shelf the way I did. It might not mean she's done. It might mean every puzzle now comes with a price tag you can't see, paid in table space and apologies, and she quietly decided the big ones cost too much. You can't gift her more puzzles out of that. I tried. They just join the stack. You have to remove the price. If that sounds familiar, look into a proper board with a cover. Do your homework on build quality and weight, because most of what's out there is closer to furniture-shaped cardboard. The one that passed my list was the Nova Board, and eight months in, it's the best gift I've ever given her. Not because of the wood or the drawers. Because she stopped checking the calendar before letting herself be happy.

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