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My mother-in-law is ready when we arrive, the black plastic triangles of a Triominoes game face down on the table. We seat ourselves around her little table, draw seven triangles apiece, and set them upright with the white numbers facing us.
Anne sets the game box on its edge between us so she can lay her pieces flat without me seeing them. The numbers are easier to see that way, she says. At 93, her vision isn’t what it used to be.
Paul goes first, laying a piece with matching numbers on each corner on the center of the table. Then we take turns, around and around, laying triangles whose numbers match on two corners with those already on the table, trying to complete a pizza shape and reluctantly drawing from the pile when we don’t have anything that fits.
“Nobody’s helping me!” mutters Anne, a phrase she is known for repeating no matter what game she is playing.
Sometimes we play another number game, Rummikub, and when we have more time we play Anne’s favorite, Scrabble. She plays this with anyone willing to indulge her — Paul on his weekly visits, out-of-state grandchildren who come to see her, and friends who stop by for an evening.
Despite her 93 years, Anne plays with intensity, and she often wins. She thinks of complex strategies, creating whole blocks of letters like a dense crossword puzzle. And she doesn’t give an inch, snatching triple-word-score opportunities and adding Fs and Xs even if it ruins the chances for more words in a whole quadrant of the board.
Every Scrabble game requires that we have the latest Scrabble dictionary on hand as well as well-worn printouts of long lists of two- and three-letter words. Certain dubious family members have been heard questioning the validity of some of these words, like “fy” and “ziz,” but for this game, those papers are the King James Bible and the final authority.
“Oh, Paul Wilton, you took my spot! I had the perfect word!” she exclaims, reverting to his full name, as only a mom is allowed to do, the same way I’m sure she did when he was 10 and forgot to do his chores. Paul doesn’t offer to remove his word for her sake. These two play to win.
We had not been dating long, back in 1982, when I discovered that his family and mine were very different when it came to table games. I concluded that if you really want to know someone, you need to play a game with them.
As kids, we played checkers and Monopoly and Candy Land. In our teen years, we played fewer games at home and more at church youth activities, especially intense sessions of Dutch Blitz, an oddly wild and physical card game for Beachy Amish kids, involving rapid shuffling and wild slapping of cards all over the table, as well as Scum and Rook.
I never had the skills, speed or coordination to win at Dutch Blitz, and while winning was great, I also played for fun and socializing.
The Smuckers, I discovered, not only played games as a family, but dove into them with the intensity of wolves at a fresh caribou kill. Games were serious. Everyone played to win. There was no room for small talk, but yelling about the game was certainly allowed. If their intensity intimidated other players, it was an unintended benefit.
Paul’s dad didn’t play games, so I assume the intensity came from his mom, as well as the skills in planning and strategy.
I have participated in many table games with my children, such as Uno and Phase 10, purely to invest in their lives and be involved in their interests. Always, the games dragged on and on.
I would take my turn and then go make popcorn for everyone, use the bathroom, make tea or empty the dishwasher, and still the game continued and I never held a winning hand. It felt like the sun rose and crossed the sky and set again two or three times per game, seeds germinated and flowered and died, generations passed, and kingdoms rose and fell before the ordeal finally ended.
Eventually, I decided there was only one game I actually enjoyed: Boggle, a fast-paced game of finding words in a 4-by-4 tray of letters. It was also the one game I had a chance of winning, which made it even less appealing to the kids.
“Does anyone want to play Boggle with me?” I’d plead. They responded, “That’s like Michael Phelps saying, ‘Hey, does anyone want to take a little race in the pool with me?’”
The go-to game for the guys in the family became Settlers of Catan, a game with the right balance of skill, luck and strategy to occupy them for hours after Thanksgiving dinner. “Two bricks for an ore!” We even turned a garage-sale sports trophy into the official Catan championship trophy, and our son Steven was the proud owner of it when he passed away in November.
When the family got together for Christmas, no one had the heart to start another game of Catan. Sad as it was to see this, it was still a heartwarming moment. I realized that for all the Smuckers’ drive and strategy, all the fierce intensity, and all the determination to win, maybe it really was about connection all along.
I hope someday to be 93 and as sharp at word games as my mother-in-law. Meanwhile, I plan to join in games that I don’t particularly enjoy and never win, because if that is the way this family communicates love and investment, I will do my best to speak their language.
