Living in the COVID World... and Beyond #67: Bridge and My Mom

I sometimes joke that I was born holding a deck of cards in my hands, and that my mother had taught me to play bridge while I was still in her womb.

This is probably an exaggeration, but I can’t say that I remember when I did not know how to play bridge.

I have many memories of being home alone as a young person and dealing out all four hands of bridge, and bidding and playing them all myself.   On Saturday night, my parents would go out, and I’d sit in front the TV set watching, or more listening, to whatever was on and practicing bridge at the same time.

I started to play bridge with my friends when I was in about 6th grade.    I invited 5 friends (Billy, Jon, David, Danny, and Joey) – we took bridge lessons together from the director of the local bridge club (Ernie).   I already knew all about how to play, but my friends did not, but they were all eager to learn.  Once they got through the basic lessons, we would invite each other to our homes on Saturday night, the host supplied snacks, and we played bridge for a few hours.   Wholesome entertainment!

When I went to boarding school starting in 9th grade (that is a whole other story), I became friends with others interested in bridge.   It was a combination of playing and me doing some instructing.   I remember that I did not have as much patience back then as I do now.   My bridge playing was good enough that some of the masters (teachers who also lived in the dorms with us), invited me to play with them.   I especially remember Mr. Cobb, who also taught Latin, inviting me to his apartment to play bridge with other teachers, and I was able to stay up after lights out as they wanted to keep playing.

My most important teacher and partner was my mom.   She was an excellent bridge player, arguably the best player in our local community.   She would regularly win when she played in local tournaments and would often travel into New York City and elsewhere, to compete in bigger tournaments.   When I played with my mom, it seemed like she never made a mistake.

Probably the biggest highlight of my bridge-playing career was that when I was 16 years old, I played in a national tournament where contestants were divided based on their level of experience.  I played with Bart (a local attorney) and stayed overnight in New York City as it was a 2-day tournament.   And we won, came in 1stplace, amongst 256 pairs (if I remember correctly).   Our victory was reported in Alan Truscott’s bridge column in The New York Times.   My 1st moment of fame!

I love that bridge is a partnership game, it is about communicating with another person as clearly and accurately as possible … and having agreements with each other about what different communication means.   All the communication in bridge is symbolic – bidding suggests what cards you hold (but you can’t say I have 5 hearts headed by the King, Queen) and playing the cards is all about signals with your partner, specifically on defense.   There is an intricate language for communicating at bridge, its artificial … and there are multiple variants of that language.

I am currently teaching 4 women in our apartment building how to play bridge.  I can see how far I’ve come as a teacher compared to my impatience with my high school friends.   In college, 2nd semester of freshman year, for my Educational Psychology class I taught my best friend how to play bridge, documented the experience, and wrote a term paper about it.   I really wanted him to learn and was really stumped as to why certain aspects were challenging for him.  The more impatient I got, the worse he did.  What a great lesson to learn about teaching.  I wouldn’t claim to have endless patience now, but I think the 4 women that I’m teaching probably feel like I do.

I want to come back to my mom.   As I wrote above, she was a highly skilled and accomplished bridge player.    She is now almost 98 years old.   When I go to visit, one thing that we reliably do is play bridge, both on the computer and going out to local bridge tournaments.   It is in playing bridge, where I can most see the impact of aging on my mom.  She is still relatively physically healthy … but her short-term memory is very challenged.   In bridge, to play well, one needs to remember what bids have been made and what cards have been played.   This is unfortunately very hard for my mom at this point in her life.   She still loves to play; it is probably her single most very favorite activity.   But she now routinely makes mistakes because of her faulty memory.  I’m glad she still enjoys it as much as she does.   And I still enjoy playing with her.   But the roles are reversed … she used to point out my mistakes to me to help me learn to be better.  And now I easily see her mistakes but often I don’t say anything … her lapses in memory are not something that she can learn and correct.

My mom taught me to play bridge, it has been a favorite activity of ours for almost all of the 69 years of my life, and it hopefully will be something we continue to do together until the day that she dies.