Stumped about what to give for Mother’s Day? How about a board game and a basket of gourmet snacks? Some of my family’s most enjoyable moments were spent hunched over a game table with a bowls of nuts or crackers at our elbows.

I can thank my mother and grandmother for my love of games. They taught my sister and me how to play gin rummy as soon as we were old enough to understand numbers and suits and hold ten cards in our hands. My grandmother was the fastest shuffler and dealer I have ever seen. She’d smack the deck on the table, split it in half, and let it rip with the impressive efficiency of a well-seasoned professional.

For me, learning how to play card games was like being allowed into a special club. Suddenly, there was an activity that I could share with grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, whether they were ten or eighty –one that was cheap, quiet, and required no physical prowess. Even the most cantankerous older relative was usually up for a game or two of gin rummy.

Sometime around my adolescence, my mother and I started what became an endless Scrabble competition. As a teen, I could sit across the Scrabble board from my mother and have a normal conversation with her – no eye-rolling, no sarcasm, just pleasant chatter. Her worn Scrabble game box is like a scrapbook; filled with years of old score sheets.

My teenaged daughter is currently dating a boy who comes from good game-playing stock. More often than not, when they hang out at his house, they end up playing board games with his parents and siblings. Their decision about whose house to spend time at has become more about what board games and how many players are available than whose television screen is larger.

Ladies used to gather for daytime bridge parties where they’d eat, drink, play cards and gossip. Now, my friends and I meet for a monthly night of Bunco, a game that requires no strategy or skill, but allows for even more gabbing, eating and drinking…therapy with dice.

My mother is still a game enthusiast. When she moved from one city to another over the years, she would get involved in a bridge club as a way to make new friends. In the community she lives in now, neighbors meet one or two evenings a week to play games eat snacks or dessert. Armed with a clever new game and a basket of gourmet snacks, she should enjoy a surge in popularity.

Contributed By Laura Weaver