Setting: August 2025 — At the table with Holden, where the rules are mostly optional.
Playing games with children is lawless.
There are no rules. Or rather, there are rules, but they’re constantly being bent, broken, and reimagined in real time by sticky fingers and mischievous grins.
Growing up, my friends and I loved games. Bingo, poker, all sorts of board games. We were intense. Competitive to the point of chaos. We’d get into full-blown screaming matches with each other and my other mother, who had to referee more than once. The stakes were always high, even if we were just playing for bragging rights.
So I’ve carried that spirit with me. Not in most things — I’m pretty easygoing about life in general — but games? Games are where I draw the line. There’s order. There’s justice. There are consequences for moving a piece out of turn.
Enter: Holden.
Holden loves to cheat.
He’ll move a peg an extra space in Trouble when he thinks I’m not looking. He’ll announce it’s his turn again before I’ve even touched the dice. Sometimes, in a moment of “generosity,” he’ll even try to help me move a piece out of home, despite the fact that I didn’t roll a six.
I usually catch him. I usually call him out. Because that’s not how I play games. Games are sacred. Games have structure. Games are serious.
Tonight, he won three out of three games of Trouble.
Only partly because he cheated.
But mostly because he’s getting older.
He’s learning the moves. Learning the rules. Learning how to beat me fair and square.
And someday, maybe sooner than I’m ready for, he will.
It won’t be like this forever.
One day, the rules will stick. The cheating will stop. The magic will fade just a little.
So tonight, I let it be wild. I let it be messy.
Because somewhere between the stolen turns and extra rolls, I realized he’s still little.
And I’m still lucky enough to be across the board from him.
This post is part of my One-Minute Memoir series — short reflections on small moments that still manage to say something big.
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