The Game Is Still Good. So Is the Hat.

A couple of years ago, at the start of the war, I made a board game for my grandchildren.

It was called: B"H, LIFE IS GOOD.

At the time, life didn't always feel particularly good.

We couldn't visit the grandchildren the way we normally did. Everyone was waiting, worrying, and holding phones up so we could see each other's faces. Hugs had been downgraded to screens. And since some of our kids didn't have screens at all, we just listened to the sound of their voices.

I wanted to make something for the kids I couldn't see. Something that said, in my own Savta-ish way: Yes, things are hard. But B"H, life is good.

So, I covered the dining room table in plastic, to protect it from me. I sat down in my blue hat, with a pile of markers, and made a game.

And when I say made, I mean made. I drew the board. I colored the spaces. I wrote out the cards. I cut things out. I glued things on. I arranged and rearranged the board just so.

It was not exactly Hasbro, but the kids loved it.

Fast forward two years.

Last week, we traveled to visit our far-away grandchildren, and I brought along my new game - the one I've been calling The EVERYTHING Game, because it has cards for little kids, older kids, thinking, doing, talking, laughing, and generally making a lot of noise.

We played. They loved it.

And then one of them said, "We still play B"H, LIFE IS GOOD."

Still.

The game I made at a dining room table had not been sitting in some forgotten corner collecting dust. It had been played. Repeatedly. By actual children.

I brought the old game home with me.

And that's when I made three important discoveries.

Number One: I had the dates wrong.

Originally, I was sure I'd made that game during COVID. I'd been telling it that way. Then I found the photo on my phone. It was the war. 

Apparently, in our family, the hard times have started to blur together. Unfortunately, one of them hasn't ended.

Number Two: The game is good.

Really good.

I looked at it with fresh eyes and thought, “You know what? This actually works.”

And I can make it better. Because, once a person discovers she can invent board games, she cannot stop.

I now have opinions about cards. And spaces. And dice. And how many squares are necessary before a child starts wondering whether the game will ever end.

I have become the sort of person who looks at a board game and thinks: This needs more interaction and fewer rules.

It's a slippery slope.

Number Three: Look at the photo. I was wearing the same hat.

Two years later. Same hat. Different game. Different grandchildren. Different circumstances.

Same Savta.

The hat, I'm proud to say, stayed exactly the same.

And suddenly I thought: Maybe that's the real game.

The world changes. The grandchildren get older. Some of them get taller than I am, which, frankly, is rude.

New games come along. Old games stay.

We sit around tables. We try to give our grandchildren something that will stay with them after we've gone home. And sometimes, years later, we discover that they kept it.

Not because it was perfect. Not because it was professionally manufactured. But because Savta made it for them.

I don't know how long B"H, LIFE IS GOOD will keep getting played. Maybe until the board falls apart. Maybe until the grandchildren are too old for it.

Although, judging from the teenagers who recently played my new game for three hours, I'm not putting any money on that.

But I do know this:

I made that game during a very hard time because I wanted my grandchildren to remember something: B"H, life is good.

Two years later, they reminded me.

And, by the way... the hat is still good, too.

B"H. ❤️