My nephew is a grown man of not yet 30, (I'm not sure how old he is). He works as a cook in a fine restaurant. He can talk knowledgeably and in depth about almost anything in the world and he has the darkest deepest brown eyes. He sports the rich red hair that his mother and several other of my siblings all have - red on the verge of auburn - and all of them have brown eyes of different shades.
His mother is a listener. I called her not long ago and when I got off the phone, my husband asked, "Did you let her talk at all?"
So, this listening sister, our mother, and I played Scrabble.
A cup of tea and the kind of easy chitchat that comes from knowing each other all of our lives was punctuated by the groans from a mix of vowels with no consonants and vice versa. My listening sister worked on a yarn project. I repeated grand kid stories. Mom let us know about far flung relatives and friends.
We made words, big and small. The score never matters to me. I can never beat Heidi at Scrabble and Mom still holds her own. Seven letter words got applause and clever placement of the biggies (X, Z, Q) brought cheers regardless of who played them.
I missed the Hand and Foot tournament that happened at my Mom's house the next night. Another sister, a niece and another nephew showed up to play. Mom had two decks of cards to the Hand and Foot collection. The cousins talked about music and social media. My sisters shared photos of their pets. They don't have grandchildren - yet.
So, today, with the relatives from afar returned to northern lands and from there to the wilds of the Southwest, I walked over to Mom's and lost at Scrabble, yet again.
Someday, in the far future I hope, I will not be able to play games in my mother's dining room. But until then I plan to play as many games with as many members of my family as possible.
With every tile that we lay down, we spell the same word over and over again. That word is "Love".
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