One of the elderly women I spend time with is housebound. Her world once included traveling to Philly to a job that supported her siblings and widowed mother. She was fifteen. As an adult she raised her children and pitched in often with grandchildren, gifting them a childhood full of homemade cookies and ponies. She made sure they learned how to swim, which she never mastered, and also to drive as teenagers, rather than in their thirties like she did. 

 

Now her routine is predictable, and her view of the world is limited to one window. Still, she enjoys her cup of Earl Gray, and a fresh bagel with butter. The news confuses her, and her vision is blurry. 

 

But when we take out the Scrabble board, she is queen. It surprises me how quickly she plays after I have laid my tiles down, though she never complains about how slow I am. She also uses colored squares to great advantage, racking up double digit scores almost every time. I have only beat her once in six months. 

 

At first I tried harder to be strategic, which only made me slower, but then I realized that her delight in swooping on a red triple word square was perhaps the highlight of the whole day. Why would I want to take that from her? 

 

This week, though, was a new high. She placed the letters quickly, counting up the score easily. It was one of those feats of creating two words with one play.

 

"Forty-two," she smiled. 

 

Come again? The actual words were innocent enough, with nary an x nor a q to inflate the number. 

 

BLAH, with the H bumped up against an O to spell OH. 

 

Seeing her happy made me feel like we had both won.