THE GAME BOOK

My five-year-old grandson has been spending August days with me while his parents work or care for his two-year-old sister, who recently had her adenoids removed.

We split up the day. Breakfast together (he'd already eaten at home, but eating with a friend is so much more fun). Then prayers - well, I pray out loud, usually singing to kid-friendly tunes like Barney might use, while he climbs onto the overhead bar of my porch swing and dangles by my side. B"H, he has not collided with me yet.

We're done just in time for the wonderful and adorable mother's helper to arrive - old enough to watch him, young enough to still enjoy the park herself. I can see them from the porch: climbing, hiding, swinging, the tips of their shoes coming into view as they fly back and forth on the big blue web swing. When she reads to him, he stares at her in adoration with big Bambi eyes.

(Every day in my head, I have her married off to one of my 12- or 13-year-old grandsons. I can already hear the conversation with their kids 20 years from now: “Abba, how did you meet Ema?”

“Well, when Ema was 11, she was a mother's helper in Savta's house. Savta made sure that, IY"H, Ema and I would meet ten years later.” And everyone will crumble in laughter.)

But that is not the subject of this blog. :-)

The subject is my game book.

My Game Book

It is not easy to entertain a five-year-old. His interest in any activity seems to last about 15 minutes tops. So one day early this month, we ran out of games.

Candy Land, done.

Chutes and Ladders, done.

Memory Match, done - and only missing at least three cards.

Out of desperation, I grabbed the sketch pad we'd used for our Family Art Exhibition and drew a very rudimentary game. Sort of like Candy Land, but without the colors, the Chocolate Forest, or the Ice Cream Mountain. Just a path, a page, and dice.

(Kids love anything with dice. And I have COLORED DICE. Bazingo.)

Wellllll, he loooooved it.

So I drew something else: a big rectangle full of dozens of little boxes. Players roll the dice and fill in that number of boxes. A giant hit. Then a path of circles - roll the dice and make your way to the end. Another success.

Then a path with instructions: land here, go forward two; land here, go back one. He thought I was brilliant.

But the pièce de résistance was his game. He asked for a pen and made his own. It didn't really have a shape - maybe a blobby shape. It didn't really have rules either (well, the rules were made up as we went along).

We colored part of it with blue squiggles. We gave it a name: THE WATER GAME.

We've played it a dozen times. It's the game he loves best. 

Not the fancy games we bought. Not the games Savta invented. The game he made himself. 

Because sometimes the best game isn't the one we give a child. It's the one we give them the chance to create.