An afternoon of card playing

For a while now my long-time friend Millie had been wanting a group of us to go to her house to "play cards". Well, Sunday three of us finally went to play while our husbands watched football on Millie's husband's big-screen, high def, super cool TV. When we arrived, Millie's mother and two aunts were also there and we agreed to play "Continental" .

I had never played the game, but my mother used to in Cuba at "el club" a.k.a. the country club. So we started playing this incredibly complicated (at least to me) game with a million cards per hand - there were so many cards in fact that I needed a card holder to hold and sort them all. We were having a great time, laughing and sipping wine. At one point "the men" went out and grilled some hot dogs and bratwurst while we played - I found it wonderfully retro - the women playing cards and the men watching football and BBQing. All we were missing were the hi-balls!

At some point Millie's daughters got home from a party - she has a set of triplets who are 14 years old and beautiful and smart and funny and fabulous. At first they were studying or something, but then one of them joined us in the game, taking over for her great-aunt. All of a sudden we had three generations of women playing and laughing together.

It didn't hit me till much later, but I realized what a joy it was and how lucky we were to have that opportunity - and even more, how lucky those girls are. Of course at 14 they don't appreciate it, they can't be expected to. But it made me think back to when my grandmother, my mother and her friends and I would do stuff together. Be it going shopping, having ginormous get togerthers on the beach, helping them in the kitchen on Thanksgiving or Christmas Eve, playing long-forgotten card games. The memories make me happy and remind me of a time when I enjoyed unconditional love from some pretty amazing women.

I hope Millie's daughters remember days like today and feel that same happiness and unconditional love. Everyone deserves to be able to look back and feel that.