Some people happy with life in pieces

Tessie Monck designed her Cold Spring kitchen with jigsaw puzzles in mind.

"This counter had to be one slab with no seams where I could do my puzzle," says Monck, a retiree who typically starts a 1,000-piece puzzle every Friday. "It's like my Friday night date. Opening a puzzle is like Christmas morning. I'm full of joy."

Along with being fun, jigsaws provide "meditation and peace for my brain," says Monck, who started puzzling about 20 years ago, around the time her husband died and she was dealing with her own health issues.

A recent jigsaw boom began during the pandemic, when some manufacturers saw their orders quadruple. "Jigsaw puzzles saved my business," says Fran Farnorotto, who owns The Gift Hut on Main Street in Cold Spring. "I didn't sell anything else, but I sold puzzles."

During the shutdown, Farnorotto accepted orders online, then "drove around Philipstown and dropped them off on people's porches." She opened her shop 14 years ago with her late husband, Jim, after working in retail merchandising for JCPenney.

Farnorotto stocks about 100 jigsaws, many featuring covers from The New Yorker. As a lifelong puzzler, she understands the joy. "There's something satisfying about that moment when you put the piece in place and you know it's the right piece," she says.

In Beacon, about 40 people participated in the Howland Public Library's inaugural puzzle swap in January, says Michelle Rivas, the adult services and community engagement librarian. Rivas expects to have another later this year. The Desmond-Fish library in Garrison and the Butterfield library in Cold Spring also have held swaps.

At the Howland event, Maria Hernandez grabbed a puzzle made by Bgraamiens (the name scrambles the letters from brain and games), a brand that specializes in puzzles with complex designs. This one had a kaleidoscope of colorful, swirling squares. The brand's puzzles are so difficult that the backs of the pieces are numbered, as a cheat code.

Hernandez doesn't cheat. She has her own system for tough puzzles. "I have little bowls and put the same shapes together," she says.

The Beacon resident fell in love with jigsaws growing up in Puerto Rico. She returned to them in recent years in part to deal with chronic depression. "It distracts me - I don't have to think," she says.

As Hernandez has learned, there is evidence that puzzles provide mental health benefits such as improving mood, cognitive function, problem-solving, patience and relieving loneliness.

At the Friendship Center for seniors in Beacon there is always a jigsaw in progress. Felicita Pinto, 76, is usually there, poring over the pieces with her one good eye. "It helps keep her mind clear," says her daughter and translator, Jenny Ayala. Her mom also does puzzles at home. "That way she's not just watching TV," she says.

Pinto always tackles a puzzle on the annual trip to Puerto Rico at Christmas to visit family. Last year it was a picture of Snoopy. "Everybody in the family has to contribute," says Ayala. "You have to put in at least one piece. That's the rule."

Fran Pergamo says her first jigsaw was a map of the U.S. that she put together repeatedly. That was 60 years ago, before she could read. As it happened, she had the map upside down; she still tends to imagine the U.S. with Florida in the northwest corner.

At her Cold Spring home, she is working on a puzzle obtained from a "friend of a friend" she met at a dinner party. When they discovered a mutual love for jigsaws, they arranged a swap. "She opened her trunk, and I picked out a couple of ones I wanted."

Pergamo prefers new jigsaws because secondhand puzzles sometimes have missing pieces. She always has a puzzle going and has 80 stacked on basement shelves.

When she finishes a puzzle, she doesn't linger. "I smooth it out and look at it," she says. "Then I drag it apart so I can move on to the next one."