Rummikub

14 tiles.

30 points to open.

Groups - tiles of the same number in different colors.

Runs - sets of consecutive numbers all in the same color.

Rummikub was a serious tradition in my family, and I recall my first experiences organizing the numbers and colors in my head as I played alongside my grandma before I was able to play on my own. I observed the players adding to runs and taking away from them in order to create their own, arranging the tiles on their rack in terms of how they planned to use them. Later on my eight year old self would feel gratification in making what I thought were strategic plays in the predominantly luck-based game: holding back the fourth tile of a group of three so I would not have to draw a tile the next turn, keeping a joker on my rack until the last minute. I made it a point to never play on the glass table in the one nook of my house to prevent my Poppy Joe from “accidentally dropping a tile” only to lean down and look up through the transparent surface to reveal the colors and numbers of the overturned tiles before drawing his own. Rummikub was the scene of the height of my competitiveness as a child, and soon my grandparents stopped letting me win in a guise of incompetence in order to fuel my own confidence and actually had to try their very best to beat me.

With age the game became a bit less engaging when I realized it really was not mathematical in any way, rather just an ordinary board game based on pattern recognition at most, and I grew less interested. It would have been inconceivable to me at the time to know that someone older than me would have trouble understanding the generally uncomplicated and straightforward components of the game. I did not know then that years later I would reteach the basics of this elementary game to my grandma, who had initially taught me.

The first day I brought the game to the rehabilitation center my Grandma Annette was admitted to after the aneurysm, I simply spread the tiles on the table she was sitting at and directed her to slide them around, aiming to stimulate her tactile perception. Later I would have her pick up the pieces, aiming to stimulate her fine motor skills. But really, overall, I wanted to prompt her memory - I hoped that the familiar elements of the board game might spark some recollections.

Months later, moving the tiles was an exercise of the past, and it was time to remind her of the rules.

“14 tiles to start, 30 points to open.”

I watched as the once meaningless blurs of numbers and colors gradually reinserted themselves in her mind as pawns of a game that ought to be used and manipulated. And now, surprising to the doctors but unsurprising to me, she takes part in the game of Rummikub again.

I think back to two Decembers ago in complete disbelief, when doctors warned she might not awake from her 2 month coma. Then months later when she did wake, but we were told she may never speak again. Even later, when we consulted medical professional after medical professional until one finally recognized the interference with her breathing was the remnants of scar tissue, not a reason for a permanent tracheostomy. A lot of people did not have hope, but my grandma worked every single day without hesitation - speech therapy, PT, OT, journaling - to get to where she is now.

We choose beliefs and build evidence around them. If you tell yourself you can not do something, you will find reasons that you indeed can not. If you tell yourself that you can, you will absolutely find reasons that reinforce that assumption.

I was reminded of this last night when I sat outside at a restaurant across from my grandma, and I smiled at her taking sips of her wine between breaks in conversation. Miracles happen, but it is often our defiance to our circumstances, our refusal to submit to an unfulfilling reality, that incites them.

And now I see Rummikub as a bit more than just a childhood game, not even just tradition and memories, but evidence of a perseverance that I deeply admire.

Love, El.