Hello, readers! I’m back with the February blog challenge! I’ll be starting today with a story about a card game and what it taught me about making the best of difficult times, then I’ll be posting every day until Saturday, the end of February. Let me confess: I really need this blogging challenge right now. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been struggling with some health issues that had a big impact on my energy, creativity and mental health. I’m still in the middle of this struggle, but today I’m making the choice to re-center my priorities and move forward as best I can. That’s where today’s blog post starts.

It was the early 2000s, and my cousin was getting married in Texas. My parents couldn’t go because it was the end of the school year and they couldn’t take the time off, but I was already out of college for the semester, so they sent me to represent our family and accompany my grandmother on the trip. Grandma Sophie and I took a flight from New York to Chicago and ended up getting stuck there for over five hours before our connecting flight to Austin.

What do you do for five hours in an airport with your 80-year old grandmother? I had no idea. Grandma Sophie and I weren’t close in the way I felt close to other family members. She was good company, generally upbeat, but she wasn’t a “go deep” kind of person and I didn’t feel she knew me very well. She tended to dismiss my questions about her past and talk about things I had little interest in, like baseball statistics. I didn’t think we had enough conversation topics to sustain us for more than ten minutes, let alone five hours.

“Let’s play cards,” Grandma suggested, settling into an uncomfortable plastic seat in the waiting area next to a food court.

“We didn’t bring any,” I said.

She handed me a five dollar bill. “Go find us some.”

I went off in search of cards, and returned with a deck depicting the Chicago skyline at sunset. We began by playing gin rummy, a game my dad taught me. Then we switched to Go Fish. We played War. We played a few other games I can’t remember. The time passed, and soon I was enjoying myself. Grandma was competitive, but lighthearted about it. When I won, she made it seem like she’d wanted me to win all along. When she won, she praised her own age and superior wisdom. It was all in good fun.

Soon her chuckles enticed other waiting strangers to join us. A man sat down nearby wearing a baseball cap, and within a few minutes Grandma was recapping last night’s Yankee game. A family with children was drawn to us when Grandma playfully winked at the older one and began a game of peek-a-boo with the baby. I shuffled the cards and watched her make friends out of strangers.

Those five hours with Grandma taught me more about her than twenty years of visiting her at home. She wasn’t the kind of person with whom I could discuss books, or have a juicy conversation about my latest boyfriend. Maybe she’d never know the details of my college courses or how I worried about my friends. But she had something else to give me: warmth, and lightness, and a different approach to life. Without Grandma, I’d have sat completely alone for five hours, reading a book or wandering the airport. But when she started that card game, I found reasons to laugh. I found people to meet. The airport became a friendly place.

I was thinking about that airport layover yesterday, because it would have been Grandma Sophie’s 101st birthday if she’d lived. She died at 99 after dementia made her forget much of her family and past life. But until the end, she was still playing peek-a-boo with children. She was still making friends with strangers. She cast warmth and lightness and humor wherever she went.

Yesterday, thinking of Grandma, I opened the drawer of my coffee table and pulled out the deck of cards with the Chicago skyline, now worn smooth. I shuffled them and played a game of solitaire. Then I looked up at my 7-year-old son and asked him if he wanted to play a game, because that’s what Grandma would have done.

This February has felt a lot like waiting in an airport. I’ve been waiting for good health, waiting for winter to be over, waiting to find my energy and creativity again. But even in the midst of waiting, there are moments when a game can be played. A child can be charmed. A new approach to life can be found.

Play a game today for my Grandma, blog readers and friends. Make a stranger smile. Don’t wait to find a happy moment; make one for yourself.