Sunday, I sat at the kitchen table and played Chicken Foot with a couple of my kids.It’s a tradition passed down from my grandparents. One Sunday a month, mom would prepare a nice dinner and load it in a cooler in the back of the green station wagon. Then, as soon as Dad came home from church, we’d share foot space in the backward facing seat of the “green machine” and make the hour long drive around the point of the mountain to Grandma and Grandpa’s house in Orem.
After dinner was served and cleared, the domino tiles were dumped on the table and we’d all draw seven. The double zero was placed in the center and the game began--dominoes branching out like chicken feet in all directions.
Grandma Winnie’s sharp pink fingernails tapped the table, inching their way to the draw pile like a one-handed percussion solo. Once there, she fiddled with the tiles, clandestinely peeking for the perfect play maker to win the round.
Play rotation rounded the table and each of us rapped the table with our knuckles, indicating that our turn was over. This was to help Grandpa, who had long since turned off his hearing aids to silence the rowdy, yet beloved, crowd of his seven grandchildren.
Though his hearing was impaired, Grandpa’s eyesight and focus were sharp. Sometime during play, the game would be stalled with an outburst:
“Dammit Winnie! Stop cheating!”
Grandma would protest in a volume that didn’t need a hearing aid and pull her hand innocently from the tiles she’d been peeking at. Dad tried to calm his parents with flustered reason. Mom stayed safe in the kitchen where no one had the kind thought to help her wash the dishes. And we, as young children, watched with shock and guilty amusement.
Years later, at my own kitchen table, last Sunday night, I placed my last tile and won yet another round. I recorded our scores, just like Grandpa had years ago, in long columns stretching the length of a page. We had played from zero to nine and back again. That’s twenty rounds, if you’re counting.
And I thought about the adventures I share with the people I love, that stretch and play though generations. Dinners and holidays. Illness and aging. Chores and vacations. Summer night games and winter fires. And everything in between. All the leftover bits and pieces.
It’s all a great adventure, isn’t it? Full of danger, doubt and fear. Courage and failure. Wonder and amazement at the journey we travel. And sometimes we cheat. Sometimes we cuss. And there’s no one else I’d rather adventure with--to there and back again.
