What Games Say

One of the things I will deeply miss when Quinn leaves for college at the end of August is our regular evening games. 

It's not every night, but it's almost any night I ask. The game the two of us play most often is Boggle. Sometimes we do Scrabble, or Cribbage. Other favorites when there are more players around are Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, Concept, Code Names, Just One, Spite and Malice, and Point Salad.

Much of the entertainment for me and Quinn when we play Boggle is adding to our word card. Nearly every round we spot something that sounds like it could be a word, and we check online at the end of the game. Some are easy to remember for no apparent reason, like DAP (which is a form of dip fishing), and others we absolutely never remember if they are allowed or not. We check everything against the online Scrabble dictionary, and after looking up the same few words over and over we started making lists on a card. One side of the card is legal words (like PAC, SLOE, and EFT) and the other side are things we always want to be words that are not (like POC, LIM, and HAR). 

We laugh a lot, and we discover many new things during Boggle. Quinn recently started learning all the variations on the spellings of letters of the Hebrew alphabet, which is a treasure trove of short words that the game allows (like BETH, TAW, and MEM). We know many forms of currency around the world thanks to Boggle.

Far and away the most interesting things I've learned while playing games with my kids over the years, is simply seeing how their minds work, and how their thought processes differ (or don't) from my own. 

The most vivid example of this in my memory was when Ian and I taught the kids how to play Monopoly at the family cottage. They were young, and the days are long up north and perfect for sprawling kinds of activities. We thought Monopoly was the kind of thing they should experience at least once, but we warned them up front that it was a mean sort of game. We didn't expect them to like it, but it's referenced enough in the culture at large that we thought they should try it.

We proceeded to play the weirdest game of Monopoly I've every experienced, because nobody got a monopoly anywhere on the board, so it became rent controlled. There were no houses or hotels to spike prices. My kids wanted to own collections of assorted property colors and each have their own railroad, etc., so everyone continued to affordably circle the board until we'd passed Go enough to break the bank and we had to stop. It was fascinating and rather heartening.

Anyway, that game gave me a glimpse into my children's possible relationships to money. Quinn likes rules. She had no interest in bending any during the game. If I could not pay rent on one of her properties, that was too bad. Aden, on the other hand, could not abide anyone suffering, so she would slip me money in order to pay rent to Quinn and expect nothing in return. Mona could not tell the difference between $200 and $200,000. Her approach to money in the game was pure chaos. The whole thing made me laugh because I told them when I am old if I have to rely on the three of them, Quinn should be in charge of my bills, Aden should decide when to pull my plug, and Mona will keep things interesting but should be in charge of nothing. Those assessments have shifted a bit as my children have become adults, but some of it's still apt.

The latest game we've been playing is called So Clover (which I think is supposed to sound like "So clever"). Each person gets a small board in the shape of a four-leaf clover, and you arrange four cards on it into a square. Each side of the square has two words and you have to write a word above each pair that will relate to them or connect them in some way. Once you've completed your board, you mix up the cards, add a decoy card, and then hand it all over to the other players who have to see if they can reassemble the board the way you had it.

To do this, you have to have a sense of how that person thinks. It's a little like Code Names, which changes depending on who your partner is and you have to rely on your shared knowledge to create meaningful clues. My kids know, for instance, that coming up with references to video games will not spark anything for me at all. Or if I'm playing with Aden I can reference Star Trek, but with Quinn that would get us nowhere.

The other night we did a round of So Clover that I found fascinating. Maybe because the two of us play so many word games together, Quinn knew intuitively how all of my clues worked. For example, I connected the pair of words "Hammer" and "Dreams" with "Nails." She kept insisting (correctly by my way of thinking) that a hammer would dream of nails. Mona and Aden kept taking the card back off and telling her that was insane. What kind of maniac would see Hammer and Dreams and write Nails? It was taking them so long to solve my board that they eventually agreed to a hint, and I told them to listen to Quinn, who put it together in seconds.

Aden, who I usually think I understand rather well, had an approach to this game I could not fathom. She didn't try to connect pairs of words, she simply found a clue that applied to each one independently. So for the words "Raft" and "Spicy" she put "Water." Her thinking was you need water for a raft, and you also drink water when eating spicy foods. My brain could compute almost none of her clues, but Mona seemed to get them. 

Like the long ago game of Monopoly, Quinn was logical, Aden was creative, and Mona was unpredictable. It made for a very entertaining game night.

I love seeing different people's strengths and priorities while playing games. In Settlers of Catan, Mona will always go for The Longest Road card. She doesn't even care if she wins, as long as she gets and retains that card as a point of pride. Quinn likes things that line up neatly. Aden will often take a purely sentimental tack and finagle it into a win. If it's a game that centers on pure strategy and Ian's playing, the rest of us seldom have a chance.

It's also enlightening to realize what gaps in experience others have that you make assumptions about. When I was growing up, my family and my Uncle Joe's family used to celebrate New Year's Eve together, and there was a different theme every time. One year we played a homemade version of Wheel of Fortune, and in addition to the kind of confusion only my dad could bring to any game, my mom and her brother were shocked to discover that none of their children knew the name of our great-grandmother. We uncovered all the letters of her name and still couldn't solve the puzzle. It had never occurred to my mom or uncle that we didn't know the name of their beloved grandmother. (But then, I also remember when someone asked my grandfather what his grandparents' names were, and he just said, "Grandma and Grandpa." He honestly didn't know.)

Word games always make my mom feel self-conscious, even though Quinn and I assure her the number of times the words POO and PEE show up in Boggle is embarrassing and she's perfectly capable of finding those, but she still won't play with us. She'll only play number based games involving cards or tiles.

Any game where I might need graph paper makes me glaze over, and makes me think of an episode of Gravity Falls where Dipper tries to explain how to play "Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons" and his sister whines, "This is like Homework: The Game!"  

My dad seldom went a week without doing a crossword puzzle. I have one in ink on my refrigerator that he didn't quite complete. I found it among his papers after he died. I tried to make him a crossword puzzle once when I was in second grade, because he loved them so much and I wanted to make him happy. I had zero idea of how they worked, though, and he had to hand it back to me explaining that the clues had to lead to words that overlapped properly, not the random mess I had made. He was very sweet about it. 

Crosswords summed up a lot about my dad. He liked clever use of language, and knowledge of both past and current events. It was an activity both solitary and neat and came in a newspaper. I used to snuggle up to him on the couch or in bed and try to help, but I was useless. I remember once the two of us puzzling over a clue about Newton, and both of us assumed it had to do with Sir Isaac Newton, but as other words came together, my dad exclaimed it was Wayne. Wayne Newton. Wayne seemed like a significant step down, history-wise, and we really laughed.

I find Sudoku puzzles relaxing. I have them stashed in glove compartments and in gig bags and on shelves and tables around the house. If they really help stave off dementia, I should be in good shape for a while.

Online I like to do the Wordle, Connections, the Mini, and Strands. Quinn and I regularly compare notes on how we did with those Times puzzles at the end of the day. We commiserate over how the Mini resets on a different schedule than the other games. The things I find easy in Connections are usually the things Quinn found hard, and vice versa. Solitary games like these feel like private interaction between me and the person who designed the puzzle. There's usually at least one category in the Connections where I scoff a bit, and feel like the game maker somehow knows and were maybe going for that reaction.

The dog just likes fetch/keep-away, and a little bit of wrestling. She has board-game-blindness and will happily tromp over whatever my kids and I are trying to play to seek affection.

I've been trying to remember what games Ian and I used to play before we had kids and everything shifted to include them. I don't know if when it's just us again what will feel right. I have such a specific rhythm of playing Boggle with Quinn that I don't know if I want to do it without her. It may become something I wait to do at holidays when she's in town.

Is it odd that when picturing the imminent empty nest that I imagine missing Boggle nights the most? Probably not, when I remember that playing games says very little about the actual games. They are about connection and time and humor and love. Losing that puzzle piece from our daily home life will be rough.

 

 

Settling Catan

I like games.  I've always liked games.  And I'm thrilled that my kids are finally old enough to play interesting ones so that I don't have to suffer through Candyland anymore.

The family card game is called Spite and Malice.  At the cottage we like Apples to Apples Jr and Monopoly.  When my mom's in town we play Cribbage.  Last year we were introduced to Set.  (I love Set, and Quinn and I do the online version regularly.)

But the big obsession of the moment is Settlers of Catan.  I bought it years ago (when Ian was deployed the second time) on the recommendation of my brother who had read good things about it.  We tried it once when he was visiting along with a friend of his who thought he remembered the rules.  It seemed like it could be fun, however it didn't get a fair trial back then because we really didn't know what we were doing.

But a friend of mine down the street does a regular game night at her house and I've been lucky enough to be invited from time to time, and upon spotting a Settlers of Catan box in the pile of games I asked if she could teach it to me.  I'm not great with reading rules, I need to learn a game by just doing it.  My friend set up an evening where I could come over and give the game a whirl.

A Real Vacation (Babble)

I didn’t realize how much I needed a real vacation until I was on it.  I have a nice life, but it’s packed.  The kids need to be shuttled to this lesson or that play date, there is always a lot to do at the violin store and rehearsals to attend, I’ve been trying to buckle down and do the work of finding an agent while not losing hope after more than two dozen rejections….  Just because a life may be currently free of crisis doesn’t mean it’s not exhausting.  And I was tired.

When we arrived at my grandma’s cottage a few weeks ago it was like getting permission to breathe.  The cottage is a house in the woods in Michigan, but it’s not like camping.  It’s a real house with two full bathrooms and a washer and dryer in the basement.  It’s secluded, but not isolated.  There are big stores and a college about half an hour away, so being at the cottage does not mean roughing it.  But at the same time, you open the door and you are in the woods.  You rarely hear cars, you never hear airplanes.  You hear loons.  And crickets.  And deer crunching through the leaves outside the back window.  It’s a life that doesn’t resemble what we’re used to in Milwaukee, and it’s magical at times.

When I first started playing around with the idea of owning grandma’s cottage ourselves, I wondered if it was worth it.  We love our home, we don’t lack for things to do here, so why would we need to drive that far just to live in a different house to call it a vacation?
But at home there is too much to do.  We are accessible, we are busy, there is always another project, another job, something we should be getting done.  At the cottage there is nothing that has to get done.  We only had one clock and the only reason we put batteries in it was because it makes a different bird sound on the hour and my kids were delighted by that.  We worried about what to cook for dinner, if we had enough sunscreen to last through the day, and if we should play Monopoly or Battleship.  That was about it.

Reality does set in at some point, because the sump pump broke when we needed to do laundry.  But somehow my husband knows how to replace one (I wasn’t even clear about what it did, to tell you the truth), and it wasn’t a disaster (thanks to Ian), just something that had to get done.  That was about as demanding as it got.

There is no urgency most of the time at the cottage.  On the first day there we were all set to go down to the water and suddenly Aden decided she wanted to play Battleship right then.  That’s the kind of arbitrary thing that feels frustrating for some reason when we’re at home.  I like to stick to the plan because there is usually so much to do, and at home I would have probably said, “No, we’re all set to leave, let’s play when we get back.”  At the cottage?  I thought about it a moment and then said, “Sure.  Go get it.”  Because what difference does it make?  We’re there to spend time together.  That’s the only plan.  It doesn’t matter what form it takes.

The other thing about the cottage is that I like who my kids are when they are there.  I like them anywhere, but at home there are different constraints on them.  The cottage sits on a bluff, and there is a path down the hill to the lake, and if you follow the path around to the other side of the water there is a little sandy swimming area my brothers and I always called ‘the point.’  Once I was sure my kids knew the way I didn’t have a problem with their running down there ahead of us.  I can’t think of anywhere in the city where I would feel comfortable with my kids being that far out of reach.  In Milwaukee that same distance would cover blocks and blocks and the variables are so different.  At age nine we’re just starting to let Aden make quick trips to Target on her own, and eventually to the park with a friend or two, but Mona and Quinn are still too small and unobservant to be trusted like that.  However, at the cottage, to some extent they can run free.  And they love it.

I also like the ways in which they adapt.  When we first stepped into the cottage my kids freaked out because they said they saw a spider.  I came over to see and spotted a tiny speck on the wall and asked, “That one?” and Mona shrieked, “Oh no!  There are TWO!”  But in the woods there are spiders.  And moths and mosquitoes and millions of other things.  You get used to it.  By the next night when Mona needed a bath and noticed a spider in a corner near the tub, I told her it looked happy there, she gave it a name, and proceeded to take her bath near the spider.  That would not happen at home.

The first day at the cottage all the kids wore shoes to walk to the point.  Walking in the country is a different skill from walking on a sidewalk, and they moved gingerly among the ferns and rocks and twigs.  By the end of the week they were running the whole way barefoot and it made me proud.

Activities inside the cottage are different as well.  It took my kids a few days to realize the TV worked, and even then they only watched it when I was too busy preparing food to read to them and they were exhausted from swimming.  There is no internet connection, so they had a break from Club Penguin and whatever else they play online at home.  Time at the cottage is best spent outside, but when it rained we played board games.  Quinn was thrilled with Battleship (which he kept calling, “Ship Battle”) and even set it up to play with an imaginary friend when everyone else needed a break.

The other game we taught the kids was Monopoly.  I don’t think I could stand to try playing Monopoly at home because it takes forever, but being at the cottage means having a big stretch of forever to use which seems almost made for playing Monopoly.  Here is the crazy thing about our two-day-on-and-off Monopoly game: If we had played it out to the end the only loser would have been the bank.  I explained to the kids ahead of time that Monopoly was not a nice game, and that in the end someone ruins everyone else, but that I still thought it was something we should try but not take it personally.

But that’s not how it went.  With five of us playing no one had a Monopoly.  On anything.  Nobody even owned more than one railroad, so it was the only game of Monopoly I’ve ever experienced where everyone made a profit.  It was rent-controlled Monopoly.  We’d pay at most about $25 to someone, and then collect $200 when we passed Go.  Even Mona with only three properties was coming out ahead.  Ian tried to make it more interesting by attempting to strike a deal with the kids to sell him something, but they only care about colors.  Quinn liked his purple property, even though it only brought in $2 rent anytime someone landed on it, and he didn’t care about building houses or hotels.  There is a lesson about the real economy in there somewhere, I suppose.  (Don’t be greedy and we all get ahead?)

But the main thing we do at the cottage is spend time at the point.  The kids (including Quinn when he’s in his floaty jacket) are finally good enough swimmers I don’t have to be in the water with them unless I want to be.  I even packed a lunch one day so the girls could stay down there as long as they liked and Ian and I took shifts watching them.  As long as they liked turned out to be seven hours.  Aden caught her first (dozen) fish by baiting a hook with pepperoni.  Quinn built sandcastles decorated with rocks and feathers.  Mona was simply thrilled with everything, from watching fish underwater through her goggles to spotting dragonflies.  I entertained myself by carving violin scrolls in the shade.
I’m still not convinced that in the long run owning the cottage will be an affordable thing to do, but right now it makes me so happy to be able to keep it in the family and be able to offer its use to people I love the same way my grandparents did.  I love it there.

But more importantly my kids love it there.  To have a place that peaceful to call our own is wonderful.  When we first got up there I was still doubting myself just a little about taking that kind of financial leap of owning a second house.  But the moment I knew it was right was when Mona came in after her long day of swimming.  She was out of breath, having beaten her dad and siblings up the hill to be the first at the table where I had dinner waiting.  She plunked down in the chair next to mine and dug in, more content than I’d ever seen her.  As Mona gazed out the window at the trees she said quietly, “I love living in the country.” 

I love that for a few weeks every year I can give that to her.  I’m already looking forward to our next real vacation.