Friday is a special day for me. It is the day for me to write a blog to send to all of my website subscribers, and it is also a game and date day.
The table games start at 2:00 p.m. In all my years married to Rhoda, we did not play gamers, except one. We sometimes played “Uno” because if we played a game that required thinking she always won, and I didn’t like that. So we played a game in which winning was pure luck. She was a middle child of a family of eight and was cultured to play games. I was the younger of two, and I preferred playing alone.
Now I play games, and I think Rhoda enjoys watching me win a game on rare occasions. She would enjoy the playmates. One player I knew as boy in a neighboring church. I became better acquainted with him as a student at Eastern Mennonite School. He was ordained and served a conservative congregation as pastor., Then as he tells it, he realized he was more teacher than preacher and had a long teaching career in New York state.
A second player is the first player’s younger sister. I have faint memories of her as a child. She is a pastor’s widow and followed him from church to church. Now, if she is not at games she is visiting one of her children, taking a birding trip, or teaching English as a second language to an immigrant.
A third player is from Michigan and is a widow. She is a bible teacher, a soloist and a friend of the first player.
A fourth player is a sister-in-law of the first player. She had lived in Florida and attended a Sunday School class with Rhoda and me. Here we know her as a friend of Millard Lind who is now in Greencroft’s health care unit. So, we get weekly reports of his welfare. When we need a ruling about a game we generally defer to her.
A fifth player was a missionary to India and then a librarian for a high school. He is widower, and a fast thinker who thinks ahead of the rest of us.. He is a bible teacher and a friendly visitor of Greencroft residents.
A sixth player is widow of a prominent evangelist. She laughs a lot and leads the whole group in laughter. If we are quiet as a group, our neighbors know that she as the one who as absent. Her absences are usually caused by volunteer work in the church kitchen.
I am the seventh, least experienced player and the one most likely to be a loser or runner up. After games, date time begins for me. Today “my Joy” is preparing an evening meal for us in her nearby apartment, and then we plan to go to the first evening session of the annual meeting of the Indiana-Michigan Conference being held at the Bethany Christian School..
