Today is day three of rain. Sometimes it is heavy enough to be heard on the roof and windows, but this morning it is a quiet rain. The wind has stopped. Last night we had thunder and lightning. First the thunder boomed then it became a rolling thunder. Usually both dogs ignore thunder, but this time Nala raised her head each time the thunder was over the house. The lightning flashed outside the back windows. It was quick. It was bright.
When I was younger, I kept the house colder. I wore a long sleeved shirt, and that was enough. I remember my mother used to keep her house so warm we complained when we visited, and we aways wore tee-shirts. I get it now. I wear a sweatshirt. I hate to be cold. The heat gets turned on earlier each year as I get older. I hibernate each winter.
One year I got a Slinky in my Christmas stocking. It was metal. I used to go to the top of the stairs and let it walk down. I’d follow. I thought it an amazing toy. The only drawback to the metal was it would twist and get caught in the other round parts. It didn’t work any more then.
I used to play jacks. My mother taught me to play. I remember moving from onesies to tensies. You never said one to ten. You aways said onesies to tensies. There were other levels after that. My mother usually beat me.
We were a game playing family. When I was a younger kid, it was board games. I remember playing Go to the Head of the Class where the game board was filled with desks, and you were promoted up the board if you answer questions correctly. I have that game, the original.
We played dominoes, double six dominoes. The game actually helped me to be better at arithmetic
When I got older, we played card games. I remember learning whist. It was aways my mother and me against my father and brother. We usually won. My father hated to lose, and he would yell at my brother when he made a wrong play. I was glad for my mother as my partner. We played Casino and Hi-Low Jack. The whole family would sit around the kitchen table playing Hi-Low Jack. It was almost a Friday ritual.
We played Uno, and my father almost always forgot to say uno. He got so frustrated he once put a match book on the table and said it was his Uno so he didn’t have to say to anymore. We laughed and told him no.
When I was an adult, my parents and I travel together to Europe almost every year. My mother packed snacks, crossword puzzle books for her and cards and a cribbage board for my father and me. We played every night until tragedy struck. Somehow we had lost the cribbage board. We were in Dublin. We raced to the department store. They had only one board. We bought it. That night when we played, we found out the board wasn’t level. It tilted every time we pegged, but we didn’t care. That became our official traveling board.
