Forty years and a game

Daily writing prompt

How do significant life events or the passage of time influence your perspective on life?

View all responses

Thirty-nine years ago, my parents were approaching their 40th wedding. My brother Doug and I decided to take them on a dinner cruise down the Intracoastal along the Palm Beaches in South Florida.

The arrangements were made, and all that was left was to find a suitable gift. The traditional gift for the 40th anniversary is ruby. I looked around and couldn’t find anything that I really liked, so I decided to make them something.

At the time, I was in my twenties and only married six months. I tried to think back on what it must have been like to have been married for four decades. Forty Christmases, Easters, New Years. Forty years of summer picnics and vacations, kids, moves, the loss of parents and close friends. I couldn’t really grasp it; they’d been married almost twice as long as I had been alive. And at that age, time moves very slowly.

I had an inspiration for something that would pull together all their history…at least as much as I had heard about. Stories told around the dinner table. Stuff I’d gleaned while working on the car or doing woodworking with Pop. Mom and Pop talking as we all watched home movies and hearing them talk about so-and-so, or this or that.

I bought a monopoly set and used spray adhesive to place a blank sheet of paper over the game board. I carefully drew in lines and the outlines where cards and spaces would go. In the place of Go, I drew a church and their wedding year. In the next corner (Jail), I put a date ten years later and drew their house from that era. Free Parking was 20 years later and a different house. Go to Jail was 30 years and yet another house; and back at Go was a mind-boggling 40 years, as long as the Children of Israel wandered in the wilderness.

Instead of traditional monopoly real estate (Mediterranean Ave –> Board Walk), I drew in places of significance: Places they’d lived, vacation spots, significant landmarks. In place of Chance and Community Chest cards, I wracked my brain to create 50-60 cards depicting funny, poignant or infamous events from our family lore (“Darryl gets three Fs. Lose 2 chips.”)

As I wrote and drew, the forty years became less abstract, more relatable; their early struggles as Pop attended college after WWII on the GI Bill and they lived in crummy housing. Their excitement at Pop’s first professional job and their starter house. Adding Doug and I, several moves, promotions and career milestones. When I finished, I looked at the game board; four sides, four decades, Mom and Pop suddenly leaping from their twenties to their sixties in a few rolls of the dice.

I sorta got it; but with my own first anniversary not yet even under my belt, not really.

The cruise was a big hit and after dinner, a few drinks and a little dancing, we found a quiet spot to open cards and gifts. I forget what Doug and his wife got them; but as Sue and I handed them our gift, there was a little confusion at first with the hand-decorated game box. I think they thought it was a gag gift. But they opened it and as they realized what it was, they became lost in their own little world.

As the Rivera Queen lub-dubbed its way past extravagant Palm Beach mansions, they pointed and talked and passed the little cards between them. Some made them laugh; others gave them pause; others made Mom dab at here eyes with a tissue. They looked at me with a mixture of love, nostalgia, and humor. And maybe a little wistfulness. Maybe they were wishing they were where Sue and I were again, just starting out, not even to Mediterranean Avenue yet.

“That’s quite the gift, Dar,” Pop said. He shook my hand. Mom simply hugged me, clutching her kleenex.

So now I’m where they were. My own 40th anniversary will be here in a year, and in looking back from the moutaintop down to the 40-year path that Sue and I have traveled…with lots of switchbacks, hairpin turns, dropoffs, and smooth level places…I’m thinking back to the Riveria Queen and wondering how time was so slow then and why it’s so fast now.

And if one of my kids were to make me a monopoly game covering those 40 years, how well it would tell our story.

© My little corner of the world 2025 | All rights reserved