Watching My Parents Play Scrabble

My parents have played Scrabble every evening after dinner for forty-three years. They keep a running score in a notebook. The current total is my mother ahead by 3,412 points.

I visited for a week this summer and watched them play every night. They're ruthless. My father plays obscure two-letter words like "qi" and "za." My mother plays long, beautiful words and then gloats quietly. They accuse each other of making up words and then look them up in a dictionary so old its spine is held together with tape.

They laugh the whole time. They hold hands under the table when they think no one is looking.

On my last night, my father played "LOVE" on a triple word score and looked up at my mother. She rolled her eyes and said, "That's only twenty-one points." But she was smiling.