My cousin Sarah (24?) is sitting across the small table from my nephew Jordan (11?), with the last cards finally out of her hand, the rest on the table before them. The stress in her eyes, visible all day, is now receding quickly, because they have won, against much a more experienced pair. This tournament has been going on all week, and she and her young partner (the youngest in the game), underdogs all week, are the champions of the Schmid Family Reunion Pitch Tournament. Cheering ensues. 

I’m from a family that plays cards. My grandmother, Maude Schmid, was a card-sharp (not shark – look it up). She played bridge and pinochle, rummy and a hundred other old-lady games. She had three daughters, and each of them had two kids. Three sets of pairs, which is probably a high-scoring hand in some game my grandma played with a neighbor, but who knows? We all learned, young. We had round, plastic pringles-can lids fastened together so we could hold card hands bigger than our kid-hands. There’s not a blood relative of mine who cannot shuffle, or who isn’t planning to teach their kid to shuffle if they’re too young.

At every family gathering big enough to get three other people around a table, my grandmother would start a game, or be a willing fourth, or coach, or substitute, depending upon how many others were playing. In our family, THE GAME, is known as Pitch. Played in two teams of two, three, or four, I’ve been friend or foe with every aunt, uncle, parent, sibling, cousin, niece, nephew, and their children or their partners. I know how likely they are to play aggressive or hold back, how likely they are to bluff, and how happy they’ll get when their gambit works out, or when they block the success of their favored enemy at the table. I know which family members will bid to take the lead with one crappy Queen in their hand, and which ones will sit quietly on Ace, King, Jack.

I learned about people’s tolerance for risk, reward, and failure. I learned to focus at the card table. How to see who followed suit, and how many cards of the favored suit have been played each round, so I could track whether my teammates or opponents were more likely to take control of the game. I learned statistics at the table: depending upon how many players (6 cards per) there are 24, 36, or 48 cards in play, that means Aces, Jacks, 10s and 2’s are more or less likely to be hiding in someone’s hand, to  be hunted. I learned to keep long and short term objectives in balance between taking a trick, taking a round, and winning the game. I learned to win gracefully, occasionally, and how to lose gracefully, a lot.  I learned all of these things in spoken and unspoken ways from my grandma, my partners, and my opponents. My family.

After my grandmother died, my grandfather made sure the entire family got together every other summer, to connect and watch families and kids grow. For the first few, we drew pairs, and played all week, culminating in a final. It was intense. Too intense for some of us, and getting in all the permutations of games cut into the swimming and the catching up. Now the tournament has been retired, but the casual late-night games continue, with people rotating in and out. Laughing, loving, remembering…