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Show peas and cheese-filled biscuits floating on the top. In the hour before bed time, we often played Blind Man's Bluff or Seek and Go Hide, a time when my mother stopped working, stopped picking up the house or ironing or packing lunches for the next day and played. The fact that we were all in the family room playing made sleeping downstairs easier. Those nights, the air still simmered with laughter when I would lie in bed, laughter that kept the monsters at bay until I could fall asleep. Get the can, my father cried, hiding behind the rattan furniture with Bryan, drawing my mother to that side of the room. Scott ran toward my mother, but she grabbed him, started to tickle him as his body dropped to the floor in giggles. I'll get it, I yelled, sure that I could sneak past her while she tackled Scott. In these games it was often one against the rest-one person blindfolded and on their knees calling out marco while the others stood on chairs or climbed atop a closet shelf and whispered polo through cupped hands, trying to deflect voices off the ceiling or walls or, if it was Seek and Go Hide, one person left the light of the family room in search of a place to hide, one big enough that the rest of the family could fit with them, one by one, leaving the final person wandering the downstairs, calling out hey, you guys, where are you? My father always chose the same place to hide, a giant cubby hole beneath Scott's bed. We knew he was there, every time, and every time when we opened the door and he jumped out, we screamed. You open it. No, you. This night it was my mother who was "it," her role to guard the can while the rest of us tried to get close enough to kick it. With Scott down, I thought I had my moment, 107 |
