The biggest mistake of my life was teaching The Monster to play Gin Rummy. It was Nanny, my English foster mum who first taught me the game as a child. Recalling those days through adult eyes, I now realize it was a way to spend time with me , all the while asking how my school day had been. In the guise of playing, I would open my heart to her of anything bothering me.
This strategy completely backfired on The Monster. Competitive to his eye teeth, The Monster soon learned to thrash me every session. The game escalated into betting, losing me up to ten dollars a month, which I could ill afford.
One day, he smugly commented ”Pops, I’m so much better than you.” My answer floored him, gaining me a few rounds of advantage. “Of course you are. That’s my job.”
Thirty years after emigrating to Canada, I received a Facebook message from Anne, Nanny’s granddaughter. “Em, it’s brilliant to find you again. We always talk about you.” I had lost touch when my business in Canada collapsed, and our home was foreclosed on. Anne ended with “You tell your boys they have a family here anytime they come.”
Her message brought tears to my eyes. In their home, amid a rough-and-tumble council housing estate, I found a haven of love and belonging. What would my life have been if somehow, Mabel or Lou, Nanny’s neighbours , had fostered me instead. My life, culminating in a thirty-year marriage and two kids, half-a world-away in Canada, would never have been. That spirit of undiluted generosity and love once shown me as a child still existed and shone even more in Anne.
I can picture Nanny looking over my shoulder, perusing Anne’s message, smiling to herself. “Yes. Much better than me.”
