Scrabble

          I love Scrabble. As a child I played with my friends. The wooden tile holders are covered with pencil notations: "today Teresa got a goat," when we were ten, and "Mary Lee Loves Bruce" when I was fourteen. For more than fifty years my mother and I played on the dining room table where soft Santa Monica light filtered in through the plate-glass windows. My father took a picture of us about ten years ago, smiling for his camera. We look so much alike, except my hair was long. Mother always wore hers short.  Neither of my parents liked long hair. They thought it hid one of a woman's most beautiful features, her neck. 

          The last years, before my dad died, Mother and I played Scrabble in the kitchen, at the little card table where they ate dinner every night, in front of the TV. 

          While my dad was napping, my mother would prepare dinner.  He'd get up from his nap and come into the kitchen, with all the wonderful dinner smells, which he couldn't smell anymore. All those years developing film in his narrow darkrooms, breathing in the hypo and the fix, probably destroyed his olfactory nerves.  He'd walk down the hall from the bedroom singing, "Hello Dolly!" my mother's nickname when she was a girl.  They would laugh. He'd give her a kiss, open the pantry and take out a big bottle of cheap, red wine. He'd pour a little in the short tumbler he kept on top of the refrigerator, covered with a plastic container lid. During dinner he'd sip about half the glass of wine, then put it back on top of the refrigerator to be refilled the next night.

          One of their clients, the pompous Peter Hayward, who coordinated the Rigid Tool Calendar shoots, was a wine snob. My dad once saved the bottle from an expensive wine someone had brought to a party, and filled it with Gallo. Of course Mr. Hayward raved about it. My dad gloated.

          When I visited my parents, my place at the card table was facing my dad, with the refrigerator and TV behind me. Mother sat with her back almost touching the oven, the kitchen was that narrow.  Just before the potatoes and vegetables were done, my father would broil salmon on a piece of aluminum foil. Then when everything was ready, Mother would hand around hot plates from the oven, take her seat, and my dad would serve us.

          Mother would have set the table with a well-worn blue-and-white check tablecloth, two short candles in triangular-shaped, mid-century wrought iron  holders, white paper napkins, and a delicate white china dish with several wedges of lemon.  I'd have already poured myself a glass of white wine, mother would drink water, and my father would serve us. We'd all say, "mmm" and "this is delicious" as we tasted the perfectly cooked fish, overdone zucchini, simple steamed potatoes.

          Mother liked to recount stories, remembering every detail until she and I were laughing and dabbing at our eyes. My father would stare at the TV wishing he could turn up the volume. He didn't like thinking about the past, but my Mother and I loved recalling and reliving stories that made us shake our heads and chuckle.

          After dinner, when I visited, my father retreated to the bedroom, where we could hear the TV blaring. We felt a little sorry for him, all alone in there, as we chatted, washed the dishes in hot soapy water, and set them to dry in the non-working dishwasher.

          We'd set up the Scrabble board, turn out the bright overhead light and sit in the more softly lighted kitchen, making our moves, congratulating each other on high-scoring words.  I'd keep score on the steno pad and flip back to previous games, which I always dated.  Little pangs of jealousy surprised me when I saw Mother had played with my nieces, Lauren or Tracy.

          "Lauren cheats," Mother once said. "She's very competitive." 

          I was glad to have this information on my sweet, kind-hearted, beautiful niece. No one could be as perfect as she appeared.

          Scrabble with Mother was cut short when she broke her hip, two years after my father died, and moved into a posh assisted-living facility overlooking the ocean. Over the course of two-and-a-half years her mind, which had been so sharp – she also loved  crosswords, reading, and watched Jeopardy every day - gradually evaporated. Her death certificate lists the cause of death as "end stage vascular dementia."

          Like a trapeze artist letting go, I let go of Scrabble with Mother and replaced it with Facebook Scrabble with girlfriends scattered across the country.  Moving to Texas was a little less traumatic knowing I'd play with my friends every day and could imagine them in their various homes: Tracy in her messy house cluttered with her son's toys; Diane in her little cabin in Mariposa, horses, sheep and dogs outside in the tall pines; Izabel in her sunny upstairs apartment in Fresno; Heidi in her wide, open house in Camarillo, Barbara overlooking hills of grape vines; and Holly with her tiki décor.          

          About a week ago online Scrabble introduced a new feature: The Teacher. After you make your move, the little face smiles or frowns and lets you know if you've made a good word or if you could have done better.  I hate the Teacher. The words he finds are higher in points but are words I've never heard of.  Sure it's fun to cheat a little and peruse the Scrabble dictionary when checking to see if a particular word is legal. But now I feel like a complete nincompoop because I didn't make "vav" or "lawny." Who in the world has ever heard of those words?

          I supposed I have the option of not using the Teacher. But just the fact that he's there, ready to taunt me for my low-scoring word, makes me feel like an intruder has entered my house. Maybe this is how my dad felt when I'd visit and take Mother away from him, so that he had to go into the bedroom and lie on the bed and watch TV, all by himself.