Motherhood & Child’s Play

When I was growing up, all I wanted to do was PLAY! Looking back on it, my parents did a great thing by allowing us to have time and space to play and imagine. My Mom, in particular, fostered play when I was little. As I grew, I was the kid who was always nagging my family to please play a game with me. My sisters were not as enthusiastic about game playing as I was. When I asked my Mom, she would usually stop what she was doing and play a card or board game with me. She did the same for her grandchildren. Connor and Rachel have fond memories of playing Sorry, War, Monopoly, Tic Tac Toe and Guess Who with their Grandma. At our house, one of our favorites to play was Mouse Trap.

I fondly remember games being a fun pastime with family and friends throughout my life. I personally have lots and lots of favorite games, it would be way too hard to pick a favorite!

When I was a younger child, I played store with my sister, Diane. The milk box at our house was a storefront. One of us would be the shopkeeper on the inside of the house and the other would be the customer on the driveway. The shop would be open when both sides of the milk box were opened.

We would play house up in the attic where we had a couch and a rug. A makeshift, pretend house with a pretend adult life was easily imagined and played out in this setting.

I played chemist in the bathroom where I would mix all sorts of cleaning supplies, shampoos and toothpaste…Ajax was a great paste maker. I was probably lucky I was behind closed doors and my family didn’t see what I was doing! I was also lucky I never had any unfortunate chemical reactions with this experiments, although I often wished for something exciting like this to occur.

When I had Barbies, I would act like I was one and Diane was another. We didn’t have the Barbie camper or dream house, but I would imagine great adventures Diane and I would embark on in a camper like that when we had grown up. I would tell Diane these stories I made up as if I had just had a dream about what happened in the story the previous night. It was like a mini series with a “to be continued…” capping off each segment. I would pick up the next day after “I had another dream” the night before. I continued this for a few weeks and regaled the most recent adventures every day to my sister. I think she enjoyed my stories. She never asked me to stop, anyway! I certainly enjoyed imagining and telling them.

There was beauty in this play! It was free-form, non-directed, imagination-based play. I didn’t know it at the time, but this kind of play is actually a form of learning! When my two children were little, they had the same experience, at my house and at my parents’ house. They made up all kinds of games and adventures with their countless stuffed animals. They played with boxes and pans, were drawn to playing in laundry baskets. They loved dressing in costume. As soon as Rachel grew out of one kitty costume, we would buy her another. I think we bought three different sizes throughout the years. They wrote and illustrated many books. They particularly enjoyed going to Diane’s house where they played with Beanie Babies with their cousin, Taylor.

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One of my favorite game themed memories happened in 2001 and ushered in my status of being a mother.

At this point in time, Chris and I had an annual tradition of playing Risk every Christmas night with family. On this particular Christmas night, we hosted our annual Risk game at our house. I was eight months pregnant. I was feeling a little uncomfortable, but toughed it out. A little after midnight, my red armies ended up conquering the world! Everyone left and I quickly realized I was in labor. I delivered my Boxing Day Babies the next day. Chris often says I only won that year because I had Ash blood in me. I don’t remember winning many games after that, so maybe he was right!

Chris and I have many great memories of playing games with his Mom, too. We would play Scrabble and Kizmet (a version of Yahtzee) quite often with her. We played games most with her when were young adults. I like to think that this quality time with Mimi helped us learn lots from her. Now, Mimi will come over to our house for dinner and we will we play games her and the kids after we eat. The beauty of family game time is that there is usually time for other conversation, life lessons and story telling.

In my family, we have long standing game tradition of playing Rummy. We played it with my Mom’s mom, Grandma Ruby, A LOT. We would have time to chat and definitely enjoyed hearing family stories during these games, even if we had already heard the same story numerous times. We built a family story while playing these games, as a matter of fact! Our Grandma Ruby had her own way of playing and the rules would suddenly change a bit mid-game (in her favor). This would happen fairly often. These game changers came to be know as “Ruby Rules” in our family. Certain family members to this day have inherited this trait and the rest of us are, oddly enough, pretty okay with this.

As my kids grew up, we continued to play games with my Mom. They learned Rummy and our family would also play other games with Mom. She was good! Mom passed away in 2015. I sure wish we could have a dinner and game night with her! My one request (besides a grilled steak) for this Mother’s Day was to have my family play some games with me. I still am the one that wants to play the most, all these years later!