Just wanted to share with you a story as we begin the week of fun and games and more games and more fun.  This is a story that has a happy beginning, an unhappy middle and a happy ending.

My mother was the greatest natural athlete I have ever known.  She helped pioneer women’s full court basketball in the 1930’s in Kentucky.  She was a coach herself and to her dying days was the best commentator on basketball I have ever heard.  But her athleticism extended well beyond the court.

She was a whiz at marbles (keepsies was the only way to play according to her). Even at age 55 with crippling emphysema she could beat anyone I knew at a game of burnout with a hardball.  She could make her own kites that we would fly over the Ohio River until they would collapse in a cascade of string and her cigarette hoarse laughter.  And she taught us knife games, notable mumbledy peg and its many variants including the one called ‘suicide’.

Her constant cry to us kids was simple: get outside and play.  Even reading in the summer became an exhortation to take clothespins and old sheets and make a reading tent.  She left us to read in those tents as long as we were outside.  I read a lot of books outside as a kid. I loved her for this simple gift of play. The unhappy middle of the story is that my mother died so young from congestive heart failure caused by smoking.

Her gaming spirit keeps on in me and mine.  That is the happy ending. And here is another one:   get out, get out and play. Games are everywhere.  And the infinite game of learning is the greatest one of all.  Perhaps if you take a walk and play marbles along the way with friends, maybe some day I will tell you the story of a game of Zorro gone awry. Until then listen to my Mom:  make games, make games and play.