Old Age Day by Day February 8, 2012

My foster granddaughter and I made valentine cards yesterday.  Then we played a mean game of UNO.  It's fun to be able to play cards with her.  At six, almost seven, she no longer needs to cheat and be "helped" in any way.  It's a big leap in maturity, and good for her math skills, I figure.  My parents played many a game with my kids:  Crazy Eights, Hearts, Gin Rummy, Canasta, Dominoes.  My parents had a game table in the family room, and when we were visiting it was usually occupied.  When my kids were really little, my mom would stack up dominoes and use them as blocks.  The kids never ceased to laugh uproarously when they would tumble.  My parents were major card sharks so their gentleness with the kids was noted.  My parents won contract bridge tournaments, and I remember when I was growing up they had a bridge night and my mother had several bridge lunches a week rotating in friends houses.  I remember the new decks, the card tables, the coasters for iced tea, the little sandwiches.  I loved the cute little notepads for scoring and tiny pencils.

When we were teenagers they taught my brother and I bridge and that was when I saw they had tempers over this so called game, and they'd get mad if we bid incorrectly.  I was torn between wanting to please them and prove I was smart, and wanting to just laugh and have fun.  It all ended when I hyperventilated one night playing with my husband and parents, and the ambulance came.  I begged off cards after that.  That wasn't, of course, just about the game, but everything disfunctional in my marriage and my parents' marriage.  For many years I wouldn't play bridge at all, and now I only play honeymoon bridge or easy card games.

But I've come back to remembering my girlfriend and I in Virginia, playing Hearts and Canasta for days on the porch when it was hot, drinking Pepsi and eating Moon Pies.  And Gin Rummy with her Grandmother and Aunt in North Carolina when we visited on the train.  It was fun, and we prolonged the game by helping each other out so it would never end.  When we finally quit, no one could tell who won or lost.  That was not the point.  The point was the giggling and teasing and passing the time in a world so slowed down that we could do nothing, and love it every minute, though we didn't know it then.