Nana

During a visit that year my grandmother asked me about a drawing I’d made in a math notebook. It was the screen of a video game I was designing, I said, proudly explaining the game’s objective and scoring. It was a platformer set in an elaborate treehouse – my other great interest, as Dad had just built one in our backyard. You see, I told Nana, you enter the treehouse here, and then you go there, and then you do this, and then throw that, and the attackers come in here, and …

“And how is your game played?” Nana said smiling – amused, but a little puzzled. She’d never seen this kind of a game in her life. “How do we move your man? Do we roll dice? Do we draw cards?”

No, I told her, this was a game you played on the TV. Nana said she’d never played that kind of a game before, but she was sure mine would be marvelous when I finished it.

Nana died 11 years ago this past Tuesday. We still miss her, and we will always love her very much.

Some headlines from an abbreviated Memorial Day weekend: