kids and cards

It must have been the perfect weather with a cloudless sky and spring like temperatures that finally got all of the kids outside at the same time. I started washing my filthy car as it had not been bathed since last fall, mostly due to the water shortage in this region. Before I knew it my daughter came out to help me. By the time we moved onto my wife's van, I looked up and was shocked to see the boys watching us. Not that they were there to help but at least they were out of their rooms.

Later in the afternoon, my daughter and I played cards for the first time in a long time. We failed miserably to win any of our two-handed solitaire games, but as usual we enjoyed talking to each other about everything in general and nothing in specific. After several attempts we gave up and moved onto Uno. It is one of my daughter's favorite card games. She just likes to play and is not worried about who wins really.

Both of these events remind me of my childhood. I used to play all kinds of games with my mother but was a really bad loser. I still don't know why she played with me, but it must have been the word "love". I would get physically angry when I lost at any game as I was so competitive about everything I did. I played football, basketball and baseball in leagues, but I guess I brought that with me when playing games at home with family. Looking back that just seems so stupid of me. That was not the height of stupidity as I did many other such things that would rank much higher.

The other thing I remember is that it seemed like endless chores. On every other Saturday morning I dusting all of the furniture in the house - now today, who even knows what in the world that means? At least I had a sister who did it the other Saturdays. I chopped wood for our fireplace and sometimes did the same for a couple of elderly women in town. I mowed several lawns and at least got paid for doing them. I had to weed our nearly one acre garden. I had to wash the dishes every other night after supper. Most of these responsibilities increased when I became the official man of the house at 14 years old, after my parents divorced. That is when I got to paint the whole outside of the house, fix things that broke around the house and wash and wax the cars. Looking back I am glad I grew up on a small farm as I learned the definition of hard manual labor and responsibility, mostly from forced chores. I did not like the divorce as my family life was not pleasant in that regard and this one event single handily changed the course of my whole life for the worse. That is one of the reasons I am so determined to not let that happen my own kids.

So let the kids and car washing followed up by playing cards continue...