She’s set up her board game for me.
In between the homework, the practices, the dishes, the everything, we carve out 15 minutes because Little Bean made what she calls the Forest Game and wants to show me.
“Fifteen people can play,” she says. “But two can play also.”
I pick a homemade piece. Mine is the puppy. Hers is the fox. (Foxes are currently her favorite animal.) There’s one dice. She’s hand crafted cards that say things like “Go to the mud” or “Roll again.” The players make their way through a forest, with bears, and paw prints and bridges over streams.
We roll and the time whittles away on this homemade creation and for some reason I keep getting ones and twos and she keeps getting fives and sixes. She’s made up the rules of course, which I don’t know until I roll and she tells me them. Apparently you have to roll the exact number to land on the finish square in order to win. If you miss you just go back to the start.
So we talk of animals, and the kids in the neighborhood, and music, and Minecraft and eventually she says, “Well, I guess I won.”
“What?” I say. “How.”
“Well, it’s time to be done with this game and I went around more times than you so I’m the winner.” She pauses and looks at me. “That’s the rules.”
I shrug and we move on to other things. If losing a board game was the price to pay for spending an evening with you, baby, I’d lose every time.