Tales of the Scrabble Table

Brought to You by the Letter Y 

I love the game and that’s why the Scrabble gods watch over me.

Last summer I was playing Scrabble with friends out on my deck.  After the game I folded the board and while I was sliding the tiles back into their little bag,  some slid off the table to the slated deck floor,  and I saw one tile fall,   literally,  through the cracks.

Our deck is elevated about five feet off the ground, and it’s dark and spiderwebby down there.   But down I went while above me my friends banged on the deck floor to show me where the tile had fallen.   Crouching around under there with a flashlight in hand I searched,  but to no avail.

So we dumped out all the tiles,  and sorted and counted to see which one was missing,  and determined it was one of the two Ys found in every set.   If you know Scrabble you know Y is a valuable letter in any hand and a four-pointer to boot.

One can order replacement tiles,   but I usually have some stray ones in my desk that have somehow gotten separated from old Scrabble sets that are long discarded –   and over the years I’ve owned quite a few.

I looked in my desk and sure enough there was a single tile lying facedown in the drawer.   It was a few shades darker than the tiles in my new set,  perhaps discolored with age,   but it would certainly do,  and I could use a black marker to relabel it appropriately.

Then I turned it over.   It was the letter Y!

Now what did I tell you about me and the Scrabble gods?

 

Out for Blood

G is a very brainy and accomplished guy –  a physician by profession and a Bridge player by avocation  – a Life Master as he’d be quick to tell you.    G is a close friend of ours,  and I’m fond of him,   but I must say he’s ridiculously competitive and far from modest.

Now I may not be as brainy as he is,  but I am a damn good Scrabble player.

Years ago G and his wife went through  a contentious divorce and he was living alone and rather forlorn.   I felt sorry for him then and often invited him over for dinner.

One night as we were eating I mentioned I loved Scrabble.   Characteristically,   G  professed to be a great player and challenged me to a game.   My husband Danny,  who doesn’t like board games anyway,   left the room to watch the Yankees on TV.   I cleared the dinner dishes and brought out my Scrabble set.

Although I’m a good player I’m not a competitive type,  I’m in it for the fun.   I’m out to beat the seven little tiles on my rack,  not the friend sitting across the table.   But G of course was out for blood,   and so when I slaughtered him,  rather than giving me a sportsmen-like,  ‘Well done Dana!’ ,  he just grumbled.

Then as I was gathering up the tiles,  the ballgame ended and Danny came back into the room.   I glanced at G and I saw panic on his face,  and I knew him well enough to know why.   He was afraid I’d tell Danny I’d won the Scrabble game and he would be humiliated.

But the Yankees had just won their game and as Danny regaled us with the play-by-play,   I saw G‘s face relax.

Since then I‘ve never mentioned my great Scrabble victory,   but I like to think G still lives in fear that one day I’ll let it slip.   So I’ve decided to keep mum and keep him forever on tenterhooks!

A brainy punishment for his hubris at my Scrabble table,  don’t you think?

– Dana Susan Lehrman 

“What in the world will we do with all this stuff?”

Soon after our mother passed away, my sister and I were faced with the daunting task that so many of our generation are dealing with these days: sorting through a lifetime’s accumulation of clothes, jewelry, tchotchkes, and mementos. Drawer after drawer revealed scarves, purses, music boxes, aprons, gloves, shawls, and costume jewelry dating back to the ’50s and even earlier. We found shoeboxes in Mom’s closet that contained the high heels that we wobbled around in when we were little girls– unworn for over forty years. We found the purses dyed or purchased to match the size 5 ½ shoes, all still stacked in their original boxes. Some of the ceramic earrings we remembered from the year we lived in New York; our mother bought them from a street vendor in Greenwich Village in 1958. The orange ones went with the orange wool dress and matching heels.

We had to do something with all of this bounty. Some of the things we kept for ourselves, but we started to think about which of our friends might like this or that necklace or handbag. We doled items out one at a time, but then we came up with the perfect idea: we would put on a “bring your own bag” trunk show, and let our friends choose from the dizzying array of accessories and “what-nots” that filled our mother’s house. Once we decided to put on a give-away party, it helped us categorize the items: keep, give-away or toss. We decided to give our mother’s treasured things a second life, with new owners.

The day before the event, we set everything out on my extended dining room table. But that wasn’t really big enough, so we used chairs and other horizontal surfaces until we found a place for everything. It was an impressive array of stuff. We also set out for display many of the hats that our mother made during her millinery phase throughout the 60’s and 70’s. The hats had all been boxed up in a large closet; her creations of feathers, fur, flowers and straw had not seen the light of day for decades. The hats ranged from “Wow!” to “what was she thinking?” but all together it was quite a body of work.

When the big day arrived, our friends walked around the table slowly, taking in each category: the jewelry, the shawls and kimonos, the scarves, hats and knick-knacks. At first, they treated the display as if it were under glass at a museum. But then, someone tried on a necklace or held up a scarf… and the fun began. We were delighted as each of our friends found something special to take, and we encouraged everyone to “try that on!”

Some of our friends brought their daughters, lured by the promise that many of the items were truly vintage. No one went home empty-handed, and more than one person filled a couple of bags.

We tried to tell a story about each piece, so that its new owner could start out knowing some part of its history: Mom bought that in Greece, or Italy, or London; it was a birthday gift or a present she bought for herself, she wore this to the symphony or the theatre.

Many of the women who came to our event have since told us tales about their new/old finery.

A charm bracelet, a beaded evening bag, a pair of earrings, a floaty chiffon wrap–they are enjoying these things as our mother must have.

The handmade wool scarf that was my most recent Hanukkah gift to my mother kept my friend Chris  warm in winter. The antique lace-trimmed velveteen pincushion now resides in England with my friend Debbie– a funny reminder of our shared agony in junior high sewing class. New memories are in the making.

The second lives turned out to be good ones for these treasures. We gave them a great send-off for the next part of their journey.

 

And a sad postscript: After my sister passed away in 2015, I did this again with some of her treasured things. Many of the same friends came to my house to take home a memento. The stories poured out: I gave her this for her  birthday; we shopped for this together in Italy; I was with her when she  bought those earrings…. The mood was very different, though. People were reluctant to take things that had been hers, but they soon got into the spirit of it, knowing that she would’ve wanted them to celebrate the memories and the good times they shared with her. The occasion provided us with an opportunity to share a moment, some laughs, and a few tears. Her memory lives on in each piece of jewelry, every framed photograph, and all the rest.

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