Board Games

I'm sitting here feeling a little sad, and do you know what triggered it? Putting a dishtowel away in the linen closet and seeing our shelf full of board games.

In my family growing up, we'd often play board games together in the evenings. Whether it was Life, Boggle, Uno, or Scattergories, we passed many hours together laughing and competing and just enjoying each other's company. Likewise, at family gatherings like birthday parties or on holidays, we'd play Pictionary with our aunts and uncles, or I'd play Battleship with my cousins. It's just what we did in our family, and it brings back a lot of good memories for me.

Hence the shelf full of board games in my linen closet. The sad part? I have nobody to play them with now that we live so far away from my family. Andrew's family just isn't big on board games...they'll play them occasionally, but family get-togethers with the Romanovs mostly consist of eating and talking. Not that there's anything wrong with that; it's just different than what I grew up with. It's a different type of family dynamic.

So I sit here tonight, missing the way my sister and I could beat almost anyone if we were teamed together in a game that required getting your teammate to guess what you were drawing or acting out (it's that sisterly brain-connection thing). I miss trying to get more words than my Mom when we'd play Boggle together. I miss sitting around the kitchen table with my family, snacks on hand, and just getting into a good game together.

I think, though, that what I really miss is not the actual playing of the games, but the closeness and the togetherness that playing board games together fostered. It kind of makes me sad that we all live so far away from each other now. My board games sit collecting dust on a shelf -- colorful, boxed reminders of a chapter in my life that will never come again.

Wanna play a game, anyone?