This past weekend was a lively one, thanks to a visit from Kathy’s Aunt Linda. When she’s around, there’s always a current of excitement in the air- and lots and lots of laughter. And when she departs, it’s hard not to feel sad. (When it came time to say goodbye to her Sunday evening, our tender-hearted niece Lorelai broke into tears- which of course prompted all of us to do the same, including Linda.) But as memorable and poignant as that scene was, and as indelibly etched as it is in all our minds, what I remember most about this visit from Aunt Linda is the laughter – and especially the games!
We played several different games over the course of her four-day visit …. Password, Catch Phrase, and Facts on Five …. and again and again I was reminded of the unique fun that can be had when a family gathers around the kitchen table and plays games together. And it’s especially nice when it’s family members who love each other, who can compete vigorously without wishing ill on each other, who are patient with each other’s foibles (be it occasional muddle-headedness or occasional bursts of excessive competitiveness) and who truly appreciate any chance to be together. And there is something so satisfying about playing a game together versus sitting in the living room, watching TV together. True, it might be something important or entertaining like the Academy Awards or the U.S. Open or – saints preserve us! – an Opera from the Met, but there’s something so passive about that in which it’s far too easy for people to recede from one another…. to be in the same room and doing the same thing and yet not really be with each other. But as we were playing these games over the weekend, it was very evident that we were really with each other. I’m not sure too many people would think of game-playing as Quality Time, but that’s exactly what it was- and almost always is.
When I think about game-playing in my childhood, I don’t remember all that much from our own chaotic house, where game pieces would be hopelessly scattered everywhere the moment the box was opened- and there’s also the famous instance when, during a long trip to South Dakota, someone left the plastic playing board for the home version of Hollywood Squares sitting on the ledge by the back window, where it actually melted. (Cool!!!) I can picture my mom playing canasta or solitaire- and there are hazy memories of Candy Land- but I especially remember playing games while visiting Aunt Gertrude and Grandpa Berg in Minnesota…. spirited games of Yahtzee and Scrabble (ah, the classics!) which were such fun. And I also remember playing games with my best friend Marshall, whose house was right down the street from us. Their games were carefully stacked on shelves, complete and intact, as though they’d been bought that very day… and I always felt like I was visiting another country – if not another solar system – when I surveyed those immaculate shelves.
By the time I was in college, the Bergs had learned to take better care of our games, and I especially remember the long hours spent at our Luther Valley house, playing Trivial Pursuit, Boggle, and fabulous card games like 99 and “I Doubt It.” Back at college, I can’t even count the number of hours Marshall and I and friends spent playing a speed solitaire game called NERTS – and I still remember a knock down/ drag out Scrabble match which I played on Nordic Choir tour with the brilliant Tim Ness as my partner. Of course, I’m a little embarrassed that we “won” the game by insisting that ‘misdonned’ and ‘misdoven’ were actual words. By that point in time, I had become a tad competitiveness in my game-playing…. and every so often, that particular demon still rears its ugly head (like the other night during Facts On Five, when I contested someone’s assumption that a Refrigerator qualifies as a Piece of Furniture- and fervently insisted that Thailand is indeed a country in the northern hemisphere.) I try to beat back this tendency to the best of my ability, but just like the famous Whack-A-Mole, it keeps reappearing, although not as badly as it once did.
Kathy and I have a closet full of games but also crazy lives that don’t allow for nearly as much game playing as we would like. Every so often, we get to engage in an energetic game of Dominoes or Sequence or Taboo or Fill Or Bust or Apples to Apples… or if Lorelai’s in the mix, Mouse Trap (a game which both Kathy and I remember from our respective childhoods.) What was so exciting about this past weekend was the realization that Lorelai could play Catch Phrase with the adults and more than hold her own…. exciting yes, if also a bittersweet reminder that she is growing up. (But one can only hope that she will always want to play the Disney version of Scene It. May that never ever change!) It’s interesting how our game playing can be one measure by which we chart a youngster growing up before our eyes … and in the case of Kathy’s mom, games were also one more means by which we could sense her mental decline, even as we appreciated her determination to do as well as she could. I also recall, with a real lump in my throat, Polly’s attentive kindness to her mom when we would play certain games … finding ways to streamline rules or simplify questions- and I remember us playing a game with some kind of beeping timekeeper that Polly would surreptitiously slip off of the table, so its noise would be less of a distraction to her mom. For someone like me who tends to take games a little too seriously, this was a very powerful lesson in what matters most … not winning or losing, but rather in everyone having fun and being there for each other. Years ago, I remember my family playing Trivial Pursuit with friends from Luther Valley, and for an older farm couple who could not answer anything correctly – I mean not being able to answer even one single question, nor even coming close – my sister Randi quietly began “reading” fake questions she would compose on the spot, in the hopes that they would finally experience some success in the game. (My favorite: name a sport you play with a stick and a puck.) Game playing is ever so much better when plenty of kindness is in the mix.
I feel like this past weekend reignited my love of playing games – reminding me that it’s one of the neatest ways to spend time with family or friends. In fact, I find myself hatching plans to invite some of my Carthage voice students over to partake in some pizza and play some Catch Phrase. I don’t know if that would seem to most of them like a hopelessly antiquated way to spend an evening, but I would hope that I would have a taker or two. It’s been way too many years since our living room was filled with the sounds of college students shouting clues to each other, laughing uproariously, and sharing in the special joy of playing games.
pictured above: These are just SOME of the games Kathy and I own. Do you know the game Jenga, where you have that stack of intricately stacked wooden pieces, and try to pull them out one by one without the whole tower toppling? Our game shelf is like our own version of Jenga. (Imagine the challenge of extricating our Yahtzee game without creating an avalanche!)