Any game with card was the devil’s game. Thus the Amish and the Mennonites popularized the game of Crokinole.
A few hundred years later, my best friend and I lay stomach first on the carpet and flicked one little puck at a time, knocking off the opponents. It was a race to one hundred each match.
I don’t really remember not playing that game. It was a part of my childhood and thus part of the childhood of my friends. The year before I ran off to college, my parents purchased a board of my very own to take with me. I couldn’t take it then so it sat in a closet collecting dust.
Tumultuous years later, life had taken a bitter toll. My identity was called into question, my integrity was challenged, and my faith shaken. As I started to see the light, and looked back over the years from my childhood to now, I remembered a simple piece of my history. How had I forgotten about it?
When I was home alone, I would pull the board from behind the couch and play a game against myself. I would place other pucks around the board and try the most difficult shots I could imagine. It was a stress relief and a way to escape the word which was either boring or lonely.
I called my mother and made a humble request to have the board sent to me. She obliged and a few days later a huge box arrive on my door step. Suspended safely in the middle of packaging, newspapers, and bubble wrap sat, almost forgotten, a piece of my innocence and my childhood.
“Hello, old friend.”
The words were filled with heavy tones of years of toil and a sigh of great relief. Years of walking this tired road had worn me down, but coming across a companion that was there from the very beginning of the journey brought up a fantastic joy. With it came memories of yesterdays and summer afternoons. It flooded my mind with Thanksgivings and Christmases with beloved family. I remembered the summers in Manitoba with my Mennonite relatives as they showed me the way the game was meant to be played while eating my fill pierogies. It came realization that we were unique. Our Mennonite heritage gave us this game almost unheard of by anyone else. My friends and their families knew of it only from playing with us. It was like being the latest runner in a relay hundreds of years in the making.
It’s part of who I am. It’s part of who may grandfather was. It’s part of who my children will be.
Removed from the box it sat atop my small coffee table. I took a white puck and placed it on the outside line and aimed towards the center slot. I still have it, I thought, this puck worth twenty points. I missed. I missed a dozen times, but just as a child, it didn’t bother me. I just kept going, one puck after another and eventually, after losing count, one fell in. I felt accomplished. I felt like that little boy sitting on his parents’ carpet floor listening to the bustle of life around me while focused intently on that simply yet profound task.
In that quiet living room, hundreds of miles away from the home of my youth, I was brought back again to a world long since left, but never forgotten. Seeming insignificant, yet so profound how little things bring such immense joy.
The only way to describe that moment, I was home. Or better yet, a piece of my home was given back to me.