Play Rummy.

A CONNECT:  A GOOD GAME OF Rummy. 

 

As kids and with our kids, we played rummy.  

These days, my husband and I  play Rummy with my sister-in-law Sweet Sue.  She has MS, and short term memory loss,  but even over the years as her MS limitations continue, she shuffles and deals,  scoops up the cards, makes points, and often wins.    

It's  a great way to connect - We have fun. We try to win as we banter back and forth, and pass the snacks and razz a little…  "Hey, are  you cheating?  Whose deal is it?"  A Nudge - whose turn is it?  It’s okay to forget, because we’re all getting older!   

And like how it is, our lives over the last seventy years, we play the hand we're dealt and  focus on that.  We’ve learned a lot, and the rules have stayed with us:  No one can play our cards for us, and no one can play their hand over again. Of course play to win! It’s more fun.  Healthy competition. No two hands are dealt the same.    And no one  wins every hand.

 

Connect:  And oh, my take on   HEARING AIDS.  

    Ida, is 91 and has just received ,  her first pair  ever - of much needed hearing aids. 

     She can  hardly hear a thing,  and yet she is a social butterfly.  When it comes to conversation,  she wings it!

     When the hearing aid guy plugged her in, she lit up!   Her demeanor changed, and  voice softened.  She could hear her own voice again...and so, leaned into a quieter  conversation, with  a peaceful  look on her face. But when she entered a room with a lot of people and conversation, that changed it a bit, and the hearing aids needed to be adjusted.   

     I think back to her own mother who lost her hearing early - but  who in her mid 90's was still up and at 'em,  in the garden,  pulling weeds,  and planting new tulip and  daffodils bulbs, and all summer long,  wanting to be in her garden.    

     Over the years, she stopped talking altogether, because she couldn't hear.  I can see her still,  standing in the midst of planted things looking at us, but not reaching out to us like she once did, as if there was a fence between us.  But we reach out for a connect -  a hug or two,  as  she shows us her  latest flowers in bloom.