Not So Solitary Solitaire

I believe that time is one of the greatest gifts we can give our children.

I often play solitaire on the computer. My husband rolls his eyes at me and I explain that I am just filling time as I wait for a page to download or an e-mail to go through (we have a slow internet connection.), but there is more to it than that. Sometimes, when I play solitaire, I hear my father’s voice. Not literally—not a Haley Joel Osmond moment (I hear dead people) but, I’ll remember a rule and a memory will come through of him telling me that I could or should play that way. My father died more than 30 years ago—I don’t have many clear memories of him, but learning those rules, those tricks, is something I did with him. It is nice to be reminded that he gave me such a gift—not my incredible card playing ability (though I really am not bad…), but the gift of time.

I hope that someday my children will be doing something as trivial as playing cards on the computer to fill time and they’ll think ,”I hear my mother’s voice.”