How to Eat an Elephant ~ Chapter Three: A Bird in the Hand

After dad was diagnosed with cancer, one of the things he liked doing most was just staying home and spending quality time together with his family. One of the favorite past times was playing cards. Playing cards is a serious matter for a Peterson.  When my grandmother died, we found stacks of notebooks where she kept score every time someone played a hand of Rummy with her. She even kept score when she played herself in Solitaire! Cards were serious business in my family!

A couple of things I learned from this:

 NEVER play cards with a Peterson, unless the rules are CLEARLY defined BEFORE you start the game. It seems like every time I would go visit, the rules of Rummy had changed…  do you have to pick up the whole pile, or can you just pick up part of it. If you only pick up part of it, do you have to play the last card you picked up? It is a game of evolution and if you don’t participate on a regular basis, it evolves WITHOUT you and that makes it very hard to catch up then next time you play!

When dad got sick we set up the card table in the living room and it was a permanent fixture for many months. Anyone who came to visit was invited to play a hand. I have great memories of the fun and the interesting conversations.

He liked to say he “had a dog from every country”, which implied that he had nothing to match up. I finally figured out that this really meant he was up to something and the hand was going to be quick… like, over before you realize what happened, kind of quick.

Another thing he said a lot was “A Bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”. I have thought about this a lot over the years. What exactly did he mean by that? In cards, of course, it meant that it's better to have a lesser but certain advantage than the possibility of a greater one that may come to nothing.

I think the life lesson here, is that we have the eternal truths that give us a certain advantage in life. We should not trade that certainty for the possibility of something greater in the eyes of the world that will certainly come to nothing.

I think that by repeating things over and over while we played cards, he was trying to send us a bigger message.

That brings me to another great lesson from the card table … the importance of family.  Family is also a certainty that should not be taken for granted and those relationships should not be traded for all the birds in the bush..

The card table was a gathering place and we frequently gathered. Once again another example of him doing the same thing over and over to teach us a life lesson… by spending hours at the card table, we formed bonds that were important to carry us through this life. It taught us that we need to gather often and enjoy those moments when family can be together, because when it boils down to it… that’s what it’s all about.

We came to this earth, to be organized in family units and help each other through the mortal journey. Some of our journey’s will take a little longer and some of us, like my sister, Brittney, came to this earth on a very brief journey. The goal is to learn the things we need to learn, while trying to live a life in such a way, that we have to opportunity to once again be gathered as a family unit on the other side of the veil.

I have thought a lot about the concept that he knew his time was limited and that perhaps he was trying to teach his kids some important life lessons by playing a simple card game and repeating the lesson over and over

The most important thing I learned from playing cards is how important it is for family time. It doesn’t matter if it’s playing cards, or sitting around shooting the breeze, it’s always good to spend time together and it’s worth every bit of effort it takes to get together.

Twenty years later my dad’s children are now somewhat scattered as we have all married and ended up in different cities and states, and the business of life prevents us from spending much time together, but we remain close in heart and I believe that the lessons of the card table had a lot to do with that!