I started playing the game thirty years ago. I was 26, married with one child and in between miscarriages. A group of us, roughly the same age and circumstances, begged one of our older friends - she was 45 maybe? - to teach us. Her mother had played and taught her.
She agreed and we met at her house one rainy Saturday in February - don't ask how I remember this so vividly since I can't remember my phone number most days. It was cold and bleak, but the four of us who came to learn didn't care. It was almost as if we were bewitched by tiles we learned were craks and bams and flowers and big jokers.
Once we mastered the basics we began playing in earnest. Three times a week, sometimes, and at night when all husbands were occupied with Quarterback Club or Monday Night Football. Or Wednesday night poker.
Our routines were simple. Housekeeping chores and children out the doors by 8: tennis from 9:00-11:00, then lunch, brought to us by smiling waitresses who loved our shenanigans - we were known as the "fun" group. We would rack the tiles and have the first game underway when the food came, but we never stopped to eat before someone had won.
We played until 2:30. Carpools waiting and dinner to prepare. We all left at the same time because we all lived the same life. Good ones, predictable and calm. We might complain of husbands who forgot the trash or to lower the toilet seat, but our landscapes were so perfect we couldn't imagine anything ever changing. We got home in time to help with homework, prepare pitchers of martinis and dinner and ask our husbands about their days.
We have remained close friends for all these years, and now we laugh at how naive we were then. And how lucky.
We played through my pregnancies, first teeth, last graduations, divorces, marriages, birth of grandchildren, death of parents and children, illness, great fortune and devastating news. We were dinosaurs, the last group of women who would collectively stay at home and wonder at the others, those who didn't have a road map that included housekeepers and yardmen and supper clubs and groceries delivered because food shopping cut into our playtime.
We were delusional. Young women of a certain age and lifestyle who still believe in happily ever after are the smuggest of smug. Fate rears its head and says "gotcha" and suddenly the life you thought you'd always lead is nothing like your reality.
So when I rack the tiles today I'll think about the person I was when I first learned the game, in the very room I'm playing today, and miss her for a millisecond. I liked her. She was so young and thought she knew everything.
She wouldn't even understand the Cliff Notes of the life she would lead.
Sounds like something I could read about in a book. I wasn't privileged; I'm envious of you in some ways.
ReplyDeleteSad for myself in some ways because I know I will always have to work for a living...marrying a man in law enforcement doesn't bode well for a lifestyle of freedom and a comfortable income. But there is hope for me.
I can spend my days teaching my children how to draw, how to set a table properly, how to apply make up, how to pee standing up, how to change a tire...how to love one another.
We are all rich in so many ways. Women, that is. Women who are idle and lazy become bitter and angry. We, who live life with what we have and make something out of it, are so blessed.
When you were 26, I was twenty. While I had absolutely no delusions, I also had no plan, and I'm not sure which is preferable! You are both so right - we are blessed and our travels have made it so much clearer. Interesting to think about: would I be a friend to my 20 year old self? Probably not.
ReplyDeleteI loved your 20 year old self! An old soul, even then.
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