During the cold of winter months, my mother and I used to stay up late at night and played Chinese cards games, the card game called "Tam Cuc". I knew my mother didn’t care to win because she let me win several hands on purpose. A couple of times when we played I started to know the hands and also knew she discarded the cards that could have let her win with big points. I didn't say anything because I wanted my mother to believe that I still needed her to teach me about the game. I think that was the best time in my adult years with my mother, when we played card games. We were drowned in our little world of the cards, and all of our worries seemed non-existent. One night I was tired and said mindlessly how old the cards were and they were kind of sticky and hard to shuffle. A few weeks later my mother had a pack of brand new cards. I never asked how she got them but I figured one of my brothers bought them for my mother at the Asian store. Maybe that explained why my mother had two of everything.
One evening we were playing and my mother was the score keeper, she won a hand. If I was an expert in the game, I would be jealous of her cards because she kept on talking of how hard it was to get that combination of the cards, and how high her points were for the hand. Then when she counted my cards she added extra points to my score as if I was a little girl and would be upset and stop playing. We played less and less as summer approached. I took summer classes in the morning, and in the afternoon we fished for crabs in the back of the apartment on the bay, and I usually went for a run before dinner time. So by night time it was too late to stay up and play cards. But when I did play my mother, the score keeper, she always gave me extra points.
