| Image Source: Morguefile, Matthew Hull. |
Two children bent over a Monopoly board, one fair haired, the other, dark. Dice rattle. Cards exchange hands. Exclaims of delight, exclamations of dismay. Calls for a break; it’s time for a drink and a snack. Then it’s back to the game.
Each player has his or her special method of arranging properties. Micah arranges his cards face down, as if the properties are mortgaged; I tried to explain to him what having your property cards face down means, but he doesn’t get it, not yet. At eight years old or so, mortgages are still far, far in the future…
His cousin Serena is serious about the game, thrusting her lower lip out as she squints and concentrates on the elaborate placement of houses, cards, money. She has her cards neatly arranged by housing block, but far fewer than her cousin.
This was the scene last Saturday evening as two cousins, guests at my annual Christmas party, spread a game of Monopoly out on the rug in the library while their parents, siblings, aunts and uncles snuggled near the fireplace or around the dining room table sipping cider and enjoying the conversation. It brought back a flood of memories for me.
In my childhood home, we had an ancient dresser in the basement that served as a sort of potting bench and catch-all. Inside its drawers were old mittens, scarves, hats; gloves without mates; ear muffs; and of course, board games.
The board games had been my parents’ and older siblings’ games. Many had wooden pieces; wooden checkers, chess pieces, Parcheesi pieces. Even the Monopoly set had wooden pieces. The shoe was like a little Dutch boy’s shoe, the pieces all worn smooth by decades of young fingers moving them about the game board.
We had Monopoly, Parcheesi, Chinese checkers, regular checkers, some sort of board game about jewel thieves (a present from my uncle), Chutes and Ladders, Candy Land and Go For Broke, a sort of anti-Monopoly.
But it was to Monopoly we turned time and time again. The set was so old and frail that for Christmas 1977, my parents bought me a new game board. It had shiny, metal pieces and plastic houses and hotels, but it was basically the same set.
We held a Monopoly tournament in the basement that went on for days on end. Doug, myself, my sister Ann, all spread out on the basement rug in the playroom. Doug was my closest friend growing up, a boy my age who lived five or six houses down the street and on the opposite side of the street. As we got older, it was harder to find games we wanted to play together, but Monopoly? Game on.
The game was so fierce and so intense that we weren’t finished it when it was supper time. It lasted three days! I remember sitting in school, fidgeting and dreaming and scheming of ways to win the game. I had to alert my parents and all of my siblings NOT TO STEP ON THE BOARD and, please God, DO NOT CLEAN IT UP. My mother had a penchant for scooping up board games, crafts and anything else left out, as if, when we left them for two seconds, they were abandoned forever. They were not! It was a game in progress, and we had to break for dinner and school the next day, but the game should remain untouched. And this time, it did.
Doug won.
But my fondest memory was the year I got the new game board as a Christmas present. We always had the week off between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day. It was a cold, snowy afternoon. We plugged in the Christmas tree lights, made hot cocoa with little mini marshmallows, and set the game up under the tree. I lay on my stomach, face down on the harsh green nylon carpeting, the Christmas tree tinsel sticking to my hair every time I moved. My sister Ann sat opposite me and we spent a blissful afternoon playing Monopoly while snow fell outside and my mom watched her talk shows. The Christmas tree lights, the glitter of the tinsel, the cocoa….and the roll and clatter of the dice, the shuffling of cards, the joyful exclamations and the cries of dismay. “Boardwalk with a hotel! You’ve gotta be kidding me!”
Even though my guests, Micah and Serena, were playing a special New York City Monopoly edition — a gift from a friend in the ad department of the New York Times many years ago — watching their faces as they played the game brought a rush of memories back. Every time I sip hot cocoa, and the fragrant steam bathes my senses, I remember my sister and that long-ago game under the Christmas tree. The lights twinkle, the tinsel glistens, and the carpet feels rough and scratchy under my cheek. I am eight years old again and the snow is swirling outside, and all is safe and warm for Christmas.
