Some Random Thoughts

January 13^th 

Writing

How much we wrote to one another. Looking back at the number of e-mails, it’s astounding how much of an epistolary quality there was to our friendship. Not that we didn’t spend time together—how pleased I always was to see her coming up my front step, or heading out of her house or apartment building to get in my car—but the hundreds of e-mails that went back and forth between us showed us how natural writing was to us as a means of communication. If I had embraced texting more, we probably would have exchanged thousands of texts, too.

She talked about wanting to be a writer; she didn’t need to want that—she was a writer. Telling stories was as integral to who she was as baking or dancing or rushing to a window to see a thunderstorm or smiling or loving.

Games

She loved board games and she had the best attitude about them. She enjoyed the social element of playing games and the opportunity they afforded to meet a wide range of people. I think she was as interested in the inter-personal dynamics that went on at a games gathering as she was in the games themselves. She was never hyper-competitive; she wanted to have fun, to learn new games, to play old favourites. 

I particularly remember playing Diamant with her and her teaching me the “save the sheep from drowning” game. She whomped me at Quiddler the first time we played it and even managed to beat my skilled sister-in-law at Pounce (a card game) a couple of times. The last games night we were both at we played the Great Dalmuti and she threw herself into the spirit of trying to ascend the social scale from the status of lesser peasant to that of a Dalmuti. 

All throughout a games night evening we would hear her laughter, her uninhibited, delightful, exuberant laughter. And I don’t know how we sit down and play games again knowing we will never hear that laughter again.