"Full House"

My essay, "Full House," appears in this month's issue of Hippocampus Magazine.

Full House
by Kathryn Bold

I’ve pulled the Yahtzee game from the top shelf of a hall closet, where my mother has kept it in her home for more than 30 years.

“Don’t open that box,” Mom warns me, when I carry it into her bedroom. “It will make you cry.” But I ignore her.

I set the game on a card table near her bed. My mother can’t play anymore. The cancer has left her too weak to even throw the dice. She sits propped up against a pillow, her birdlike hands picking nervously at her comforter, watching me with wary eyes. I lift the lid of the well-worn box and pull out the score sheets.

Back in the 1970s, my family began an odd tradition of saving our used Yahtzee scorecards, and now I’m sifting through a stack of them about 50 deep. We never threw them out, even after we’d filled out all of the squares on the Yahtzee grid, because along with our tallies we would jot little notes in the margins. Usually we’d record the date, the location (“at grandma’s house!”), and any significant events (birthdays and anniversaries pop up with regularity). Sometimes we would editorialize on our opponents’ skill (or lack of it) and whatever else came to mind as we waited our turn.

Over time, the scribbles became an account of our family history, like Egyptian hieroglyphs or ancient cave drawings.

More >> www.hippocampusmagazine.com/2014/09/full-house-by-kathryn-bold/