Cheating / Death

A girl learns her first lessons about cheating and death at her grandparents’ house, playing cards and Scrabble and listening to them read from the obituaries in the Detroit Jewish News.

- Laura Bernstein-Machlay

When my daughter, Celia, was little, I usually let her win at whatever kid-die games we played. I loved watching her victory-dance around the room as she squeaked and crowed in celebration, so letting her beat me seemed like a no-brainer.

Steven—my husband, Celia’s father— didn’t agree.

“The world doesn’t work that way. She has to learn to lose with grace.”

“It’s Go Fish,” I said. “Besides, what fiveyear-old is graceful? She falls down getting out of bed.”

He worked himself up as he went along. “You know it’s cheating. It’s a lie. You’re teaching her to lie.”

But Celia was an only child, I argued. A tender girl prone to dread from her toddler years on. She needed a store of wins in her “win/loss” columns, the ones shaping her self-worth through her early years and the horrors of adolescence, then her whole life.

Eventually Steven and I agreed to disagree, and Celia learned a few lessons about losing, anyway: parts in plays and friends and arguments. Never mind I hovered like a hummingbird over her little kid shoulders, trying to make her days benign as a room of softest cotton, not a sharp corner to be found.

Because, let’s face it, real life is problematic. Parents stumble, people cheat, loved ones leave. Sometimes they up and die, even though you believed they’d stay with you forever.