Let's Play a Board Game Instead - #361

Chinese Checkers

Photo by Amy LV

Our family has been playing a lot of Chinese Checkers lately.  Somehow I missed this experience in childhood, but it's a quick blast of a strategy game.  Plus, the glass marbles make a pleasing little "click" as they move across this board.  (Some Amazon reviews says that the marbles are plastic...perhaps they have changed the design.  I would not want plastic marbles.)

This house has no video games, so choosing board games is not really much of a choice.  But today I wrote pretending to be someone choosing a board game instead of a usual screen game.  I wrote about something that I like to do, hoping just a wee bit that people who read this poem will want to play more board games too.

Students - what do you like to do that you think others should try?  Writing gives people a glimpse into a new world, a way of seeing things differently.  People make choices and change their lives based on what they read.  

Two weeks ago, I read "For My Daughter Who Loves Animals," by Dorianne Laux. 

Every week, whether the money is there 

or not, I write a check for her lessons.....

...Now I see how she has always loved them all,

snails and spiders, from the very beginning,

without fear or shame, saw even

the least of them, ants, gnats, heard

and answered even the slightest of their calls.

After reading this poem, I scheduled a riding lesson for Hope, something we had set aside due to the expense.  Dorianne's words changed my actions.

Words are powerful indeed.

This week's goal:  beat Henry in Chinese Checkers!

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My Poem Writing Year #151 - solitaire

Grandma Florence Conolley Dreyer

1920s

Photo by ??

My maternal grandmother, Florence Conolley Dreyer (married to Norman Dreyer of the banjo), used to play cards with me when I was a little girl.  We'd sit at her shiny dining room table and play hours of Go Fish, Rummy, and Old Maid.  Grandma had a yellow Tupperware sugar bowl full of pennies, and somehow I always left that table with handfuls of change.  She has been gone for twelve years now, and I still wonder how many times she let me win.

I learned to play Solitaire from my grandmother, and I whiled away many an afternoon dealing those Bicycle cards into seven stacks and hoping that I would win.  Sometimes I did, but usually not.

This week, I keep finding my daughter Georgia playing Solitaire.  I taught her how to play, and when she lines up those rows of red and black, I think of Grandma and smile.

Here's a good book with lots of Solitaire games if you're interested in learning to play.

Shop Indie Bookstores

Students - Sometimes writing ideas come from where the past and present meet.  That's how I found this one.

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