Solitaire
My grandmother can’t play solitaire anymore. Doesn’t seem like much does it?
When I was younger, my grandparents, my mother’s parents, lived in another country. My mother had been driven from her home by expectations, my father leading her by the hand. The relationship between my child self and these grandparents, this mythical shadow family, was one of great familiarity plagued by lack of knowing one another. The image of the old man and old woman I knew was a patchwork of visits. I knew his face, his voice, but only the pleasant and the superficial versions, not the way he looked when he was serious or worried. There was no time to be serious, and no one welcomes a worried houseguest. We were the vacation. They were our vacation. I knew her hugs and her music on the piano, but I didn’t know her values or the rules she shaped my mother with. There were no rules on a visit, no debates. You put on your best face. We all did.
I remember Grandma's hands, shuffling cards. Her blue shirt sleeves flowering over her creased tan hands. My mother would draw me over the table. It seemed so large and its black finish smelled of forests. I was still innocent of the scent of individual trees, hadn’t yet had to encounter the competition of knowledge. Grandma would lay the cards out in front of each of us.
This is how I learned the game of solitaire. Group solitaire, a contradiction in itself. Not a monotonous isolated passer of time, but a loud fast slapping of cards in hands and patterns in the mind. My mother laughing as she cried out against the slight of hand of my grandmother. We showed love through helping one to find the place of her cards in the stacks of suites. We came together to mash our separate decks into one mess of Aces through Kings. Then, just as urgently all the energy would go into tearing apart these hierarchal units, dividing them back into the colour coated packs.
There were no winners in this game, just the shared goal. I wouldn’t have remembered winning and losing today. I remember playing these games. Biding by the hot days, daughter’s daughter learning from the oldest mother.
My grandmother can’t play solitaire anymore. Her mind has crumbled away. Her hands don’t know to flip one card a top the other, to make a match appear even though the hand dealt has none. Sometimes she doesn’t know her daughter, and without a daughter there is no daughter’s daughter. I am fading from her as the past pushes out today and now. I can’t say I know the woman she was, only a faint reflection. I don’t have her values, and I don’t know her as a mother and its too late now to know. But she taught be this game, she gave me this game. It seems like such a little thing, but it is a lot.
When I was younger, my grandparents, my mother’s parents, lived in another country. My mother had been driven from her home by expectations, my father leading her by the hand. The relationship between my child self and these grandparents, this mythical shadow family, was one of great familiarity plagued by lack of knowing one another. The image of the old man and old woman I knew was a patchwork of visits. I knew his face, his voice, but only the pleasant and the superficial versions, not the way he looked when he was serious or worried. There was no time to be serious, and no one welcomes a worried houseguest. We were the vacation. They were our vacation. I knew her hugs and her music on the piano, but I didn’t know her values or the rules she shaped my mother with. There were no rules on a visit, no debates. You put on your best face. We all did.
I remember Grandma's hands, shuffling cards. Her blue shirt sleeves flowering over her creased tan hands. My mother would draw me over the table. It seemed so large and its black finish smelled of forests. I was still innocent of the scent of individual trees, hadn’t yet had to encounter the competition of knowledge. Grandma would lay the cards out in front of each of us.
This is how I learned the game of solitaire. Group solitaire, a contradiction in itself. Not a monotonous isolated passer of time, but a loud fast slapping of cards in hands and patterns in the mind. My mother laughing as she cried out against the slight of hand of my grandmother. We showed love through helping one to find the place of her cards in the stacks of suites. We came together to mash our separate decks into one mess of Aces through Kings. Then, just as urgently all the energy would go into tearing apart these hierarchal units, dividing them back into the colour coated packs.
There were no winners in this game, just the shared goal. I wouldn’t have remembered winning and losing today. I remember playing these games. Biding by the hot days, daughter’s daughter learning from the oldest mother.
My grandmother can’t play solitaire anymore. Her mind has crumbled away. Her hands don’t know to flip one card a top the other, to make a match appear even though the hand dealt has none. Sometimes she doesn’t know her daughter, and without a daughter there is no daughter’s daughter. I am fading from her as the past pushes out today and now. I can’t say I know the woman she was, only a faint reflection. I don’t have her values, and I don’t know her as a mother and its too late now to know. But she taught be this game, she gave me this game. It seems like such a little thing, but it is a lot.