my dad taught me how to play chess

thank you, johnny cash.

Comments

  1. ratchick said September 14, 2003, 5:20 pm:

    i had a regular, on-the-premises father. he wasn’t of the talkative variety but he taught me how to play chess. he bought me a chess set that i still own. it’s just a plastic, green and white chess set. the pieces look like chinese figurines of green jade. my son and his friends play with it in the garage some nights… i was surprised that they even knew how :)
    i don’t think that i was a very good player, i don’t know if i could even play the game right now. but i do love that chess set. recently i picked up the game from the garage and brought it into the house. putting the pieces away, i realized that one was missing. i think i went a little ballistic on the garage rats… one of them finally found the missing piece, under the futon…, lucky for them. the little green castle is now sitting all alone in my bookcase, next to one of my dad’s little chinese paintings.

    the last time i said ‘i love you’ to my father, he smiled, but he didn’t know who i was.

    this now raises the number of times i’ve cried in front of a strange blog to one hundred and seventeen. at least.

  2. Anne said September 16, 2003, 4:08 pm:

    My own father taught me an important lesson about “time” that i’ve never forgotten. There’s a thing about fathers…

    I decided to try to bridge the gulf between us and tell him just how much he meant to me. He was in the hospital for the first time in his life, i was in my twenties. Emotion was something he never could deal with and he’s passed that along. But his illness frightened me into the truth of things and i decided it was time we said some important things to each other… just as soon as he was well and came home.

    But he didn’t.