Chess, really?

My daughter has started to play chess a lot more recently. She has had an interest in it for a little while but she surprised me at Christmas time when she asked for a chess board of her own. From that time on she slowly started to play it more and more, to the extent that she asked if I would play with her at least once a week. When I was younger I remember my dad playing chess so much, sometimes by himself other times with friends. I never understood what the big deal was until I started playing my daughter.

This is not hard for me to admit, my daughter is smarter than me, and I think she knows it but plays it off to make me feel better. Granted street smarts she doesn’t quite have but she is intellectual and understands things pretty quickly. Playing chess with her has proven that over and over. At first she was kind enough to let me make the mistakes I made, like moving my castle diagonally or having my pawn get jumped over by my rook, but then she became sinister. I no longer got the helpful treatment I was getting. In all of the games I have played with her I won once, and I think it was because she was sick and not paying attention. I think that was the one and only time I snagged her queen almost right away. From that point on I lost and usually pretty badly. But I don’t mind, it’s not that I am trying to loose, it’s just not a game I am strong in, and that’s ok.

The opportunities that I get to spend with my teenage daughter is worth me loosing a game. I am loving the time I get and what has ultimately happened is that I have gotten my dad and brother involved. In one of my times in which I thought I had a game in my pocket, I was working on getting closer to check mate, I had taken her queen and was working on the other pieces to make a straight line to the main prize, when out of nowhere she bamboozled me and won. I was in a state of shock but I also knew at that point I needed to bring in reinforcements. I called my dad. I made it clear that he needed to play my daughter so that she could learn from someone with experience and actually have a challenging game. Then my brother mentioned he was also playing chess so with that knowledge, games were set up that gave her fun challenges in between her games with me.

My time spent with my daughter playing a game morphed into time spent with family members she doesn’t talk with a whole lot. It created conversations in between my dad and I since my daughter doesn’t answer her phone a whole lot. It ultimately had nothing really to do with the game but more about quality time. I think if one my children asked me to learn to belly dance with them I would do it just to spend time with them. I am not blind to the fact that I have two my kids getting close to the age in which they will start a life of their own. I am taking in all the time I can get with them. I am not one of those parents that wishes they could turn back time, but I am definitely looking for the moments in which I am invited into my kids’ lives and I am relishing in the time spent with them, even if it means learning how to play chess. Until next time:

Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection

Mark Twain