Not Just your Everyday Monopoly Game...

I have thought for a while now that I had no more good memories left to create with my dad.  This weekend was one of those weekends that proved me wrong – though challenging at times, I leave this weekend knowing now that I, and Toby especially, have new memories of my dad firmly entrenched in our brains.    I might go as afar as to NAME this weekend: The One in Which my Father Taught Toby How to Swear.

We had come down for the night to watch my dad while my mother ran a conference. She was home briefly to see then kids then off to host a dinner. This was particularly troubling to my dad who LIVES for any opportunity to go out for dinner; after she left I had a tough job keeping a disappointed “Why isn’t Grandma putting me to bed” Toby and a mournful “Why isn’t my beloved wife taking me with her out for dinner” father preoccupied from their respective abandonment.

After Mia was in bed and the baseball game was over I ventured into the basement to look through the old board games to see if I could find one of interest for the boys.  I came upstairs with an armful of old favourites but there was one in particular that caught my dad’s attention. “MONOPOLY!” he exclaimed, “I used to play that by the HOUR at the cottage”.  NB: this was WAY before my time.  My father was FAR too much of an intellectual to EVER play a game such as Monopoly with me when I had been a kid.  But he always tells the tales of long lazy summer days he spent (with my siblings) at the cottage playing Monopoly by the hour…

SO I called his bluff.

Of COURSE he was a willing play with us, he said excitedly, forgetting, temporarily about his beloved wife and his intellectual prowess.

I set the game up, explained it to Toby (and my now attentive father) and soon we were in the midst of a heated and VERY exciting game.

All set to go...

Toby loves any board game but I think his favourite part was watching my highly competitive and slightly disinhibited father take him on.  They duked it out.  They bargained over properties and rejoiced loudly whenever they got extra cash from Community Chest or were the first to land on a coveted property.  A few times my dad came dangerously close to rolling 3 sets of doubles in a row (which lands you in jail).  “OH BLOODY HELL!!!” He roared, much to Toby’s amazement.   Frequently, my dad actually DID get sent to jail, which was consistently met with an unabashed, “OH SHIT!” from his part.

Toby just about fell of his chair.

Normally, when someone swears in front of Toby we either admonish it or cover it up.

I decided that this time, JUST THIS ONCE, I was just going to let it go…at LEAST he wasn’t asking where Lynda was…

For a good 45 minutes I reveled in the absolute perfection of the moment; my dad was joyfully enjoying a very stereotypical moment of delight with his grandson; Toby was thriving in the right of passage of his very first Monopoly game; I was simultaneously managing to entertain my son AND distract my dad from his usual distress over my mother's absence.  Witnessing the enormous smiles and intense, genetically pre-programmed looks of competitive concentration on their faces is something I will not soon forget.

But it went deeper than that…I was also finally experiencing a part of my dad that only my brothers and sisters had been privy to; his unabashed, relaxed younger self who wanted nothing more than to spend an entire day relaxing at the cottage with a board game.  And Toby was seeing my dad in a whole new light - - for a brief time his Papa wasn’t the old man who constantly called out for his “beloved Lynda” but was a fierce competitor.  He was a rebellious swearer.  He was a FUN grandfather.

And then there was my dad, who, for one hour on this one particular evening, forgot that he was lonely and away from his wife.  He forgot to be anxious.  He forgot that he couldn’t remember.  He was living in the moment and truly appreciating being with us and playing a game as if it was the most typical of happenings.  For this brief moment in time I saw my dad and my son together as they should be – grandfather and beloved grandson – without the shadow of Alzheimer's marring their fun.

And THEN I asked him if he wanted to build a house on Marvin Gardens.

It seemed QUITE logical to me.  I mean, he DID own the yellow property monopoly and had a huge WAD of cash built up from landing on Free Parking twice in a row.

I got a look.

“Lyssie…” he scratched his head…"OH…I don’t KNOW!  How much is a house…OH…and WHERE do you want me to put it???  And where the HELL is your MOTHER?!?!?”

It unraveled from there.  Eventually the game was abandoned, Toby went to bed, and dad took comfort in eating bananas in the corner of the kitchen while he waited, impatiently,  for the return of his beloved wife.

I often remind my mother, when dad picks up a particularly trying new habit, that “this too shall pass.”   I just never realized before that it also now applies to all of good moments, too.

Guess who got Boardwalk and Park Place?  Dad was NOT happy!!!

Dad wasn't sure that having all 4 railroads WAS a good thing...that was before he realized he got $200 every time we landed on one of them...!!!