And the Winner Is

Lise, Craig and I sit on the floor of the living room finishing a game of Blockus. These January days that rush into darkness along with the gradual return of sports and extracurricular activities provide an unusual leisure hour or two at the end of the day before the children take to their bedrooms with books. And so the stacks of board games that fill the girls' closet have been making winter evening rounds at the dining room table and on the living room floor. Tam watches quietly from where her head rests on Craig's lap, the rest of her sprawled on the rug beside him while he obligingly rubs her head between turns. Rem, not so quietly, hovers over us as I play my last blue piece and end the game. He bursts into tears.

"I wanted to win," he cries, large crocodile tears streaming down his face. Though it appears he has inherited the appropriate competitive gene for survival in our family the cart is really before the horse here.

"I know you wanted to win," I sympathize. "But you have to actually play the game to have a chance to win."

Lise, satisfied with a second place finish packs up the game and leaves to put it away allowing Miren to safely reappear without having to play. She prefers word-centered games like Scrabble and Boggle and would rather not risk losing at the more spatially minded games. Lise excels at games like Blockus and Mastermind but will, unlike her sister, good-naturedly continue to hone her skills at the other games even though she typically loses.

Mostly, they both like the long, involved games of pure chance. I groan at the sight of Monopoly but even more painful is the current favorite game of Life. Time passes idly as money gets sorted, cars get drivers and stacks of cards that will determine our fate get arranged. Questions arise as I watch the girls busily ready the game, questions like: do we really need to be reminded of the chances and luck that often govern our real lives? Or the surpise of the unexpected bills that send us struggling to get to the next step? Is it only the status of millionaire that will save us from a retirement home at the end of our lives?

Roped into playing with them anyway leads to further disturbances. Lise, for instance, NEVER goes to college. She ALWAYS chooses the vocational route and happily collects a hair stylist's salary or a mechanic's pay. Is this some foreboding of her future plans? If so, then equally disturbing is Miren's penchant for gambling. All game long she risks large sums of money on something called Spin to Win and typically amasses millions. The game of life, like my own often leaves me befuddled. Once I was congratulated on the birth of my grandchild despite the fact that I had gone through life childless.

Games filled the nooks and crannies of my childhood. My grandfather taught me to play checkers at a very young age and in doing so laid the groundwork for my family's cutthroat approach to various tabletop diversions. We sat across from each other over the glossy wooden coffee table in the back room of his home. CBS soap operas blared on the TV beside us as his thick, hairy fingers swiftly glided red checkers across the board. Occasionally he'd get caught up in a love scene or in a particular character's episode of amnesia and I would have to wait until a commercial before his next move.

"Eldon," my grandmother called from the kitchen where she tapped around in her black pumps preparing dinner. She sometimes needed him to reach inside cabinets to retrieve pots or pantry items.

Grandpappy ignored her. He didn't trust me alone with the board. Grandmama had to wait until the game ended. Luckily for her, this didn't take very long. I received little instruction beyond the basic rules of the game and sometimes a little criticism.

"That was a stupid move," Grandpappy responded to my careful, hesitant push of the black checker toward his red ones.

"King me!" He shouted on his next turn, scooping up the checkers he'd jumped and started attacking my pieces from the other side.

Mom, clearly raised in this environment, continued the same kind of sink or swim immersion into games we played at home. Her competitive nature coupled with that of her children's created a sort of street atmosphere around the game. Sometimes it was ugly. Often there were tears. Always, there was a winner and a real loser (we played for second place, third place, etc. until one person remained to absorb most of the humiliation). We took our first steps into the ruthless environment with no one holding our hand. The others hovered like vultures, waiting happily for a new fall guy to take the brunt of the losses. Forget that we were related. All that meant was that the same cold blood coursed through all of our veins.

Memories abound of Mom deftly adding Scrabble scores on a sheet of loose leaf paper near the board and smiling encouragingly, the way I might look at Miren or Lise in a similar situation, as I struggled to compose words out of i's and r's. More difficulty ensued as I tried to find a place for my meager solutions among words that had provided her with at least one hundred more points than I had.

Some of us, on our quest to win, cheated. A game of Battleship with Kris nearly dictated a chase involving ghostly battleships that miraculously avoided hits until Kris literally pinned his ships into a stack in the corner of his board. Usually, his board tipped accidentally and all pegs were lost with no possibility of a winner (or a loser). What did we expect? He had to jump into a pit of experienced snakes filled with venom. He survived any way he could.

Trivial Pursiut sat as a permanent part of our repertoire of games in the late eighties. The original version, it turned out, appealed more to the older generation than the teenagers in our house. Mom loved the game and convinced us to play over and over. She tried to sweeten the pot by suggesting we play on teams. She'd grab a token teammate (we were all equally lacking in the general knowledge required for success at this game) and the rest of us saps plied our brains for answers that she'd giddily spout out when we answered incorrectly. She collected pieces of pie like my brothers at a Gramercy Christmas party.

Dad, however, equally frustrated us from a different angle. Usually, he did not play games but when he did he spent more time arguing about the printed answers on cards than actually playing. Angry and full of disgust for the game, he rambled off long dissertations about the REAL facts until we asked him to quit. He happily obliged and retreated to bed.

Now, our extended family plays on equal footing. We retain the competitive spirit of old and want to win with the same ferocity as our childhood selves. Together we gather in my parent's family room, on a late summer evening or at the end of a long celebration with pencils ready for a cutthroat game of Balderdash or Scattegories. Siblings and spouses show indomitable spirit as we body up against each other arguing at will over vacation places that start with P (is Pakistan really a vacation spot?) and items found in a lunchbox that start with W (who needs a wrench at lunchtime?). We pause, ready to unleash unrelenting wrath at whoever stands in our way of having the most points (this includes our mother). Our late nights of "fun" now welcome the next generation into our sadistic tradition. Koby and Miren pass out pencils while Lauren sets up the board or assimilates game pieces. Dad will even team up with a young person if it isn't too late and we try to exhibit patience as Dad explains his team's famous duo, an old cowboy and his horse from a serial Western that no one has ever heard of or some characters from the radio show Let's Pretend of his childhood while his nine year old partner helps him argue his case.

Rem, however, has much to learn. He wipes his eyes and retrieves his pirate game from his room. The idea is to place little plastic swords in slots along the brown plastic barrel that houses the pirate without getting the pirate. A plastic pirate with a painted patch over his eye that sometimes doubles as Rem's baby sits with his head poking out of the barrel while Craig and Rem take turns plugging the slots with the colorful weaponry. Rem sends the pirate into the air with a yellow sword and screams, "I've won! I've won!" Really, he has lost but with the road ahead we smile knowingly and give him a high five. Craig resets the game for another round.

Santa lives here. Well, sometimes. With a nod to the season, Rem now includes Santa and the Grinch among the various personalities that he espouses in a given day. Rem will wake from a dead sleep, sit up in bed (usually between Craig and me) and belt out a resounding “Ho Ho Ho”. This typically wakes us from our dead sleep and we half-heartedly bid Santa a good morning.

“I smell something,” the Rem-Santa grins. I sniff, hoping to ease into the day without having to start with major diaper duty. “It’s cookies! Santa eats cookies,” Santa says with hope. And adds another “ho ho ho” for good measure. Relieved, I get out of bed and suggest that we get the girls up for school without acknowledging the request for early morning treats.

“The elves,” Santa corrects, leading the way down the stairs, his blond hair sticking up in places.

“Wake up sleepy head elves,” Santa shouts from between the twin beds before rushing into his own room to find the snow boots and jean jacket that will announce to everyone his identity.

“Feel my fluff,” Santa encourages at the breakfast table. Unwilling elves wave their hands near Santa’s face.

“Nice beard,” one of them musters. Rem nods proudly.

Later, I wander into the living room to find Rem throwing toys under the tree. “What are you doing?” I ask in a raised voice.

“You better watch out," Rem replies rushing out of the room and back in with a basket full of Duplo blocks.

“Don’t!” I warn but to no avail. The myriad of colorful plastic rains on top of the trucks and cardboard houses, the stethoscope and hammer. “Start picking this up right now, young man.”

“Ho ho ho,” Rem answers nonchalantly. “I’m Santa.” He skirts around me and returns with a stack of books. He tosses them onto the pile. Most of them hit ornaments and they spin and wave disorderedly. Rem laughs. He looks up at me.

“I’m Santa,” he says again. “And Santa puts toys under the tree.”

“Not like this,” I begin. “This is a mess. Rem, Santa, whoever you are this has to get cleaned up.”
“Ask the elves,” Santa suggests. “I don’t pick up toys.”

Rem doesn’t like the idea of Santa using the chimney. He wants Santa knocking on the door. He’d like the reindeer to land on the porch, not on the roof. And the jolly fat man must come in through the door. We are often encouraged to reinforce the use of the door.

“As I drew in my head and was turning around,” I read, “Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.”

“Ah, ah, ah,” Rem interrupts. “He came in the door. Read it right next time.”

When he sings Santa Claus is Coming to Town, (and he can sing the entire song), he sings “Santa Claus is coming in the door”. Just in case we didn’t get it.

We visited the Grove Park Inn last week to enviously admire the gingerbread masterpieces and wonder how we can fail so miserably with our graham cracker houses. Rem wasn’t impressed with the candy that no one could eat and preferred running down the wide hallways at the hotel until he spied the sleigh at the far end of the festive lobby. He could hardly contain himself as he sprinted to the sleigh, climbed aboard and grasped the reigns.

I rushed into action and sent the girls onto the sleigh for a Christmas picture. I snapped a few but Rem, busy guiding the reindeer and “ho ho ho-ing” at every passerby prevented any really nice shots. He insisted we call him Santa as we encouraged him to look my way, Miren and Lise doing their best to draw his attention away from the reindeer. People started gathering, waiting patiently for their own photo ops but Santa dug in his heels.

“Let’s go look at some more gingerbread houses,” Miren suggested, taking Rem’s arm to guide him.

“No.” He shook her off.

Lise stepped in. “Do you see all of the people waiting for their turn? They want to get on the sleigh, too.”

“This is my sleigh,” he retorted condescendingly. “They can’t get on my sleigh.”
I had to pull Santa off, kicking and screaming.

He enjoys having us sit on his lap and tell him what we want for Christmas. He reminds us that he’ll have to check his list but otherwise he is a kind Santa and pats our shoulders encouragingly. But when we broach the subject of going to see Santa he merely shrugs and answers, “Ha ha ha – I am Santa, silly.”

The Grinch is easy. All of the work goes into coaxing a sister or parent into playing the part of Cindy Lou Who or Max. Once accomplished, Rem leads his unwilling fellow thespian through various scenes from the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Rem’s finger drumming is unmatched and his study of Dr. Seuss’s illustrations render a convincing villain even if his costars’ cooing like a dove resonates with aggravated pre-teen impatience as the little Who, who is not more than two finds the merry-go-round staging frustrating after playing a scene for the fifth consecutive time. The season arrives, doesn’t it? Whatever is playing out in life, it comes. And thank God for that.

Happy Halloween

We moved to Asheville on Halloween. Craig and I ate candy from the plastic jack o lantern we placed on the dashboard of the small U-haul truck that carried everything we owned and pulled the blue Tercel away from the Gulf Coast, across the Deep South into the mountains of western North Carolina. After driving what now seems a most circuitous route, we parked in front of our rental in the dark greeted by a gust of wind that sent a rush of dry leaves noisily down into the park across the street. No ghosts or ghouls roamed the streets of our neighborhood and although we hastily flipped the switch to the front porch light, no trick-or-treaters knocked to partake in the remnants of the candy that had traveled with us.

By the time we purchased the house down the street we could at least count on our neighbor Sara to stop by and show off her costume on her way to a party or at the onset of a trick-or-treating run with friends. Miren and Lise came along before the neighborhood began changing into the family friendly place that it is now where most of the houses have lighted porches on Halloween and most of the children we see are familiar faces that splash in the pool with us in summer, bike around us in the park and fill our streets with noisy play.

Craig’s mom usually makes the children their costumes, happily agreeing to both traditional and bizarre requests. She started with a devil costume that all three wore for their first Halloween outing that is comical in its disproportion to the babies that wore it. We put the devil hat on Rem the other day as we unpacked our Halloween boxes and when he saw the horns he began mooing like a cow (they are very big). Memorable costumes have made their way to parties and street gatherings as well as the neighborhood runs including Lise as a vampire with a bat-winged cape and a skeleton with an oversized skull . Miren’s bride of Frankenstein almost surpassed her fortune teller with a glowing crystal ball that rested on an attached table. One of my favorites was the evil stepmother from Snow White in her hag disguise with a hump and basket of apples. Miren had to explain herself to almost every person we encountered. Lise made a lovely toddler Tinker Bell to Miren’s Peter Pan and last year had a sidekick of her own when she and Rem dressed as pirates.

The children sometimes embrace the macabre and Craig and I enjoy helping them complete those characters. Last year Miren paraded as a rotting corpse in an old black velvet dress of mine that we cut to reveal skeletal body parts. Craig accounts for much of the vision for their requests and my talent for theatrical hair and make-up surprises all of us. This year Lise challenges me to create the snake-laden head of Medusa. Miren gave up scary in order to keep in character beyond tonight into long, dreary winter days as she becomes Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennett. I imagine she will have to explain herself to more than a few people tonight. Rem will sport a yellow hat and a monkey in honor of his favorite TV, storybook and all around fictional character, George. Happy Halloween everyone!