One month later ...

When I was nine years old my father taught me to play chess. He noticed a rather impatient child, eager to get on with life, eager to stay ahead of the pack (four siblings, four cousins living next door and a neighborhood full of kids) and thought learning patience would be a good thing.

My father also loved to plot. All the way to the end I would think I was winning and suddenly I would be blindsided as a triumphant, "Checkmate" was whispered in my ear. These games would start after dinner and often run to bed time and carry over to the next evening and even the evening after that. When I won it was a true win, my father never, ever, "let" us kids win at anything. I became well schooled in looking at the board from all angles, from thinking like my opponent and not only looking at what my own moves were but what were his probable responses, what were the logical responses and what would be the "hail mary" responses?

As I became better he wasn't past moving pieces during the night so I would have to memorize the board. There were no policemen to cry out "Cheater!" to, no judges to appeal to, no higher authority than him. I had to figure out on my own what to do, how to counter his maneuvers, how to retaliate. He would chuckle to find the pieces back to their original spot after he had moved them (or sometimes removed them) and was surprised and finally laughed when I moved them myself (I think I expected a bolt of lightening from the chess gods to hit). I learned to read his face for grimaces and then to read it for fake grimaces. I learned to trust my own gut instincts. I learned how to plot a strategy but even more valuable I learned how to change that strategy mid-stream when it was apparent that my strategy wasn't working.

What else I learned is that I could get too enmeshed in what was, after all, just a game. I would dream the game, plot moves during school, daydream about what the board looked like on the bus ride home and check it frequently until my dad got home and dinner was over. I learned to like silence and to listen to one thought fall in line with another, but it was like all my other thoughts fell away and total focus was on one thing.

Soon, thank goodness, winter was over and spring brought about softball, the outdoors and the allure of the woods. Even so, I would find myself mulling over a move my father had tricked me with during his last win, wondering if a different strategy would have saved me from hearing the whispered, "Checkmate"?

When my ex-husband and I had nothing left of our marriage we still had chess. We would literally play from the time I put the children into bed at 7 pm until they woke at 6 or 7 am the next morning, often having to call it a draw. Games standing didn't stay upright to babies crawling and we didn't often have two nights in a row we wanted to stay in the same room together, even for chess.

My husband, my love, my best friend and I have never played chess. He chuckled when I asked him if he wanted to play the game with me. Having seen me play softball he said he couldn't imagine how but he was sure I could turn it into a painful contact sport for him!

It has occurred to me over this past month that the training I received at my father's knee has not been wasted. It is a resource I draw on repeatedly without even realizing it, a second nature. I'm not quite sure if it is a tournament I have entered or one long game but it is a challenge I have been trained to meet. It is one more thing to thank him for.