WHEN WE TAUGHT OUR GRANDCHILDREN HOW TO GAMBLE

I ran across some photos the other day hanging off an old branch on our family tree… and as photos often do they awoke a memory in me. I love how that happens…sometimes as down memory lane I ramble a simple photograph or two can make a memory unscramble. It was the night we taught our grandchildren to play poker (If their mom and dad were there they might’ve been appalled!) The night we took our four grandchildren… and made gamblers of them all. In our defense poker teaches many life lessons… and to our grandchildren we wanted to relay them…. Like how as important as the cards we’re dealt… It’s even more important how we play them. It teaches us how to read another person… when to bluff…and when to wait… And how every now and then you need to take a chance on drawing to an inside straight. It teaches us when we have the cards….to enjoy the moment…that feeling…the rush and how…no matter how we’d like it to be different…a full house always beats a flush. Poker teaches us how to lose with dignity…when all we needed was that ace! And when we have the winning hand…how to win with decency and grace. We like to think when our grandchildren look back on our times together They’ll remember all the fun we had… They’ll remember our support and our praise… They’ll remember dinners around our table celebrating birthdays and holidays… And in those quiet moments… perhaps when they see an old photo hanging from our family tree a memory will unscramble… and they’ll remember when they were young the night Nana and PopPop taught them how to gamble.