Rummikub

I threw away my Rummikub set this morning, heard the clang of the garbage truck at six, the lift of the bin high in the air, the sound of its contents emptying into the back of the garbage truck. It's gone. A part of me went with it. It was just missing the yellow twelve and one joker. We played without jokers. The red nine we glued together. I would always take that piece first in my opening hand. 

On Shabbos I got a cut on the top of my finger from the inside lining of the game's case. The case, by now, was all worn out and there was no more blue leather covering it. The inside green felt dividers were broken and had been thrown away. You didn't need to make the neat stacks of five anymore either when you cleaned up and put away the game. And everybody had to play with just one of the plastic feet holding up their boards. It worked, you just need to be careful. Until now I wouldn't have thrown it away, even when we got the new Rummikub game as a gift. I put that one under the steps and packed it away for Pessach. After being pricked by the protruding staple, I knew it was time to give it up. I wasn't focused at all when I played that last game with my granddaughter.

 I have had this Rummikub game since I was ten. I chose it as my Christmas present from an organization that my mother belonged to called "The Single Parent Family". We went to the Christmas parties to get our gifts. I must've played Rummikub with my mother a million times. She taught me that you needed fifty-two points to put out your hand, not thirty, according to my children's rules. And one could be placed after thirteen. 

I always had to beat her at it. When it was my turn, I would rearrange the board in every which way, to see how I could get rid of my tiles. Sometimes, I wouldn’t play out my hand until the very end, playing out my entire hand on my first turn and winning. She hated that. She would watch me carefully and say it’s not about winning the game it’s about having fun. Not for me. It was only about winning the game. I never did believe her.