My Grandparents had/have an affinity for cards. Most of my childhood memories at their house are filled with aunties and uncles, neighbors and friends around kitchen tables shuffling and cutting multiple decks in preparation for games. Hands moving from bowls of fruit and popcorn to prayed-over dealt hands organizing suits to fit perfectly fanned in wrinkled brown hands. There was a music to the whole thing. A cacophony of hums in complaint and pleasure, whispers, and groans and questions like “Who dealt this,” while the bidding took place, an overture before the trash talk symphony began. If you watched closely you might see how each player’s eyes danced in longing across plastic-covered tables with their partners, hoping they’d be in tune enough to make enough bids to get to Boston. They’d play for hours until one winner was crowned for the week, their score on the back of an old piece of tattered mail, giving bragging privileges until they finally dragged themselves out of the door. This was always a special time for my Nanna, I particularly knew it was because of how she’d linger at the table once everyone was gone. She’d sit shuffling her decks, looking over the score, and my favorite, playing one more game of Solitare.
It was the most peaceful thing to watch. A stark difference from the rambunctious group games of Bid Whist or Spades. It was a simple carved-out moment of silence and joy. Her hands flipping cards and stacking them one by one suit by suit…
Ace,
2,
3,
4,
and so on until the pile was crowned with a King. This was the definition of delight.
My Nanna passed recently and one of the things I kept was a set of her cards. I keep them on my coffee table in a repurposed JCPenney velvet jewelry box she’d hide them in. Inside lay two old Bicycle brand decks of cards that once were warmed and warn from her hands- one red and the other blue. If you deal through the 52 cards, you’ll find my Nanna’s handwriting on the jokers, BIG for the colorful one and LITTLE for the monotoned one, indicating which one holds the most power when playing games like Bid Whist or Spades. Every time I take them out of the box I am inspired by how much they invite wonder. Fifty-two cards can create thousands of different games. The simplicity of just numbers, two colors, and four suits inspires creativity and fun.
Within the conversation of wonder, there is another more immediate part of life that invites us into presence, delight. If faith is believing in the existence of fire before the sight of a flame, and wonder is the practice of being with the possibilities that can come from holding a matchbox in your hand, then delight is the act of striking the match. It’s an immediate sense of pleasure that invites us into longing. If faith is believing that a win is possible from a deck of 52 random cards, and wonder is the practice of splaying the cards out on the table; counting and choosing what game should be played, then delight is the sound of the cards passing wind from a perfect shuffle in preparation for the first deal. Delight is the spark that pushes us into the possibility of more goodness, into wonder. While faith and wonder require nothing outside of belief, delight requires action, it requires a risk or attempt. I wonder if we often find ourselves not experiencing delight because we are afraid to take a risk.
This summer I want to play more. So I have taken up playing cards. A couple of months ago, I pulled out my Nanna’s decks and relearned Solitare for myself. My first ten hands were terrible. I could barely get past two rounds of pulls from the stockpile without losing. I could not understand why or how anyone would want to play this game analog without the assistance of a computer’s sympathy. There were too many risks and it didn’t feel like there was any strategy to the game, it felt like it was all luck, (and it was not working in my favor). I would deal out my hand, pile up my seven columns of stacks, and within five minutes I’d hit a wall, unable to move any cards from their locked-in place. It was so pointless to me. That was until I realized that maybe it was not about the big win as much as it was about the small ones; moment-to-moment as a card was revealed, prolonging the game for just a few more plays.
“That black Jack of Spades that just revealed itself can move this whole stack because of the red ten of hearts, which then leaves an opening for that King of Hearts in the Stock Pile, which, Oh my God everything can move…”
With each flip new possibilities; new outcomes, drawing me into more. All because I was committed to trying, committed to seeing, committed to the discovery.
Ross Gay is one of my favorite people to listen to talk about Joy and Delight. Over the course of a year, from birthday to birthday, he challenged himself to write about finding joy and delight in his day-to-day as a practice. Here’s an excerpt he shares from his book The Book Of Delights:
When I began this gathering of essays, which, yes, comes from the French essai, meaning to try, or to attempt, I planned on writing one of these things — these attempts — every day for a year. When I decided this I was walking back to my lodging in a castle (delight) from two very strong espressos at a café in Umbertide (delight), having just accidentally pilfered a handful of loquats from what I thought was a public tree (but upon just a touch more scrutiny was obviously not — delight!), and sucking on the ripe little fruit, turning the smooth gems of their seeds around in my mouth as wild fennel fronds wisped in the breeze on the roadside, a field of sunflowers stretched to the horizon, casting their seedy grins to the sun above, the honeybees in the linden trees thick enough for me not only to hear but to feel in my body, the sun like a guiding hand on my back, saying everything is possible. Everything.
My Nanna’s cards are warn with delight, and little did I know that it wasn’t the cards, although they be magical, but the practice of delight that was my true inheritance. I’m learning to cherish the shuffle before the outcome, to flip one card at a time in ecstasy, and to allow my small delights to inform my wonder and faith.
Won’t you join me?
This made me cry!!! Ugh so much delight. And the thought of how important it was for our grandparents to find joy. And these things, though simple to us, opened a whole different world for them. 💜💛