Tag: games

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Open Write Day 2 of 3 November 2025: Traditions Tanka with Mo Daley of Illinois

Mo Daley is our host for today’s Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com. She inspires us to write tanka poems to share our traditions. This may be one you’d like to try today, so I’m including her directions below.

Mo writes, “This time of year always gets me thinking about traditions. There are many my family and I look forward to celebrating with each other. I really love hearing about other peoples’ traditions, too. Hayrides, Oktoberfest, pumpkin patches, bonfires, corn mazes, pumpkin carving, and cooking might be some of the traditions that come to mind when you think of fall. Today’s poem is a way for you to flex your poetic muscles while letting all of us learn a little bit more about you and the traditions you observe.” 

Mo inspires us with these words: “Write a tanka or series of tankas telling us all about a favorite, or maybe least favorite, fall tradition. A tanka is a traditional Japanese poetic form of 31 syllables over 5 lines. The syllable count is 5/7/5/7/7. Usually there is a turn in the third line. Consider focusing on sensory images to help us feel like we are right there with you. “

You can read Mo’s poem at the Open Write today by clicking here. In my poem below, I feel the need to clarify the spelling of the yellow bear. My first grandson could not say yellow, so when my son suggested they go on a bear hunt on our farm in rural Georgia to find the highly-elusive-never-before-seen yellow bear, my grandson couldn’t stop talking about the lellow bear, and none of us have called it anything different ever since. I still have the picture of them setting out to find it, and it warms my heart to think that one simple moment, one slight of the tongue, became a family tradition that remains to this day.

Traditions Tanka

first, the pumpkin bread

that started when they were kids

I tie the apron

sift the flour, mix in the eggs

add sugar, spices, pumpkin

dominoes thunder

onto great granny’s table

the one I redid

while the bread bakes, we play games

we pair with grandkids

we all walk the farm

looking for the “lellow bear”

every eye stays peeled

lellow bear is elusive

someday, we might catch a glimpse

the coffee pot stays

full of fresh brew to help us

keep up with these kids

Scrabble (turntable version)

for adults, post-kids’-bedtime

togetherness fills my soul

I take a deep breath

they were born last week

now here they are, with their own

tears of gratitude well up

Several years ago ~ from the time of his first bear hunt to early teens
The walk that started it all: the first hunt for the elusive lellow bear
Today, the hunts continue
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Family Christmas

We celebrated Christmas with the Johnson side of the family last night and played a couple of games of Left Center Right on the heels of dessert. The dinner menu was kept simple – Stouffer’s Lasagna, Cole’s garlic bread, and salad, with peach cobbler a la mode for dessert. Christmas and Thanksgiving are the only occasions on which I get out the good dishes and set the table with a tablecloth, chargers, placemats, fabric napkins, and a centerpiece – in our case three, to honor our departed mothers. We still don’t have much to drink from besides Mason jars, so we use clear Solo cups for our sweet tea. These dishes, I should mention, were given across the years (like my beloved Nativity set) as Christmas gifts from my mother and my former mother-in-law to build a set a few rungs higher than our basic white lead-free, chip-proof Corelle which came on the scene when I felt the first signs of arthritis.

Dishes that have been family gifts over the years

The ancestral kitchen spirits are always welcome, but on holidays we go a step further in summoning them; we light candles for Briar and Kyle’s mom (Pat), Bethany’s mom (Barbara), and my mom (Miriam), as we do on other holidays to remember them and keep them close.

Ollie with Briar bringing game luck

I do not believe in fancy seating place cards, though, not when there is theater box candy screaming in the dollar store to be used for this purpose. Everyone had a favorite at the top of their plate: Reese’s Pieces (Jack). Milk Duds (Briar), Raisinets (Kyle), Sugar Babies (Jax), Junior Mints (Andrew), Hot Tamales (Bethany), SweeTarts (Cece), and Boston Baked Beans (me). 

Fitz sits with Bethany

Even the dogs wanted in on the fun. We think the one reason Briar won both games when he was the only one who had to be coaxed into playing was that Ollie sat in his lap bringing good vibes. Fitz stayed with Bethany, and Boo Radley stayed under the table and with Kyle.

We exchanged gifts and sampled a libation or two, and our gift with strings attached were lottery tickets for the 620 million Powerball drawing on Saturday night. If any of us wins on those tickets, we have to give the other 7 folks in the picture 5 million dollars each. What’s 35 million on 620? We each placed our ticket on the coffee table and put a finger at the top of our ticket so we can check all the numbers via that photo. Nothing like a little family accountability in case someone tries to plan a surprise move to Switzerland suddenly.

Folks usually hope and pray for a white Christmas. We are hoping and praying for a green one!

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Sleepless Christmas Time

All six grandchildren are here with two parents, their three labs and the two of us and our three Schnoodles. The house has never been more alive than it is right now (you can actually feel its heartbeat thumping, pulsing with the energy of children). We celebrated Christmas together yesterday. During the weekend time, we have watched our small town’s Christmas Parade, baked and decorated Christmas cookies and pumpkin bread, made peanut butter fudge, cooked a big pancake breakfast, played outside and amassed Georgia red clay dirt stains from wrestling in the grass and playing King of the Hill, made pinecone birdfeeders and watched the birds come to an early Christmas feast, taken a walk with the dogs to look for the elusive “Lellow Bear” that has lived in these woods for many years, napped, visited a family friend at the fire station, opened gifts, played board and card games and dominoes because we gave away the Scrabble board, feasted on Lasagna and garlic bread, and ran inside from the drizzle that stopped our fireside marshmallow roast plans. We’ve taken a tour of the camper and talked about all the plants on the front porch, including the ways to propagate them for our nine year old environmentalist grandson to have snips of offshoots of these plant species (he already has five varieties of succulents and cactuses growing in his room). He has shown us how to make his favorite tea. We’ve taken some moments here and there to sit on the swing of serenity and have a brief time of peace before being discovered by someone needing less peace. We’ve thrown the ball down the hall for the fetching dog hundreds of times and tested stain removers on knees of pants and elbows of jackets and shirts. We’ve K-cupped multiple times a day to keep caffeinated enough to keep pace with the little ones and read books at quiet times.

We’ve found half-eaten marshmallows in the pantry and little pieces of games and random things here and there – – including six grapes, four smushed into the floor. And we’ve showered at the oddest times, just to stagger for hot water so that all ten of us wouldn’t get the shower shivers.

And we’ve tasted sleep. 

But we have not indulged in the entire entree of sleep.

That will come in time.

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Reflection: Campfire Stories Game Cards

Anytime I see a new way of telling stories or writing, I get excited and buy stuff. That’s what happened when I was in Barnes and Noble in Atlanta recently and picked up a copy of Gathered Around the Campfire by Melody Carson and read a few pages of her real life stories about her experiences under the stars. That’s also what happened when I was walking through the Betty Dunn Nature Center at Fall Creek Falls State Park in Tennessee and saw a deck of cards called Campfire Stories: Prompts for Igniting Stories by the Fire, published by Mountaineers Books (Ilyssa Kyu & Dave Kyu). There are 50 cards in the deck, complete with instructions and variations for storytelling.

As one who loves to camp, I look forward to using these to generate new conversations as I relax and spend time with others as we make s’mores and stargaze. That’s enough of a reason to love these prompts. My role as a Literacy Specialist and leader of small writing groups is a bonus reason. Cards like these help in getting to know students and inspiring them with new ideas for their writing. The game element adds to the thrill!

Immediately, I was transported to White Wharf at Bear Skin Neck in Rockport, Massachussetts when I selected the card that asked me to share an object I found and kept from my travels. I can still see clearly the tiny pair of angel wings resting along the shore as I ambled around near the water’s edge searching for sea glass. My mother, who often took me shell hunting on Sea Island, Georgia when I was a child, found several pairs of intact angel wings over the years and celebrated each rare discovery. Her sweet hello from Heaven was a reminder that no matter where I am on the face of this planet, she is right there with me. I wrote a poem about my experience here.

A Hello from Heaven….Mom sent a pair of angel wings to White Wharf for me to find!

Another time, I took a walk with my daughter while visiting her for the weekend and picked up a rock at the edge of the path. I brought it home to put on my computer at work so that whenever I see it, I think back to that afternoon I spent with her and know that a piece of our journey is still tangible. These objects inspire the memories, and the memories keep those we love close to us.

“I realize their trailer was pretty tiny, but it didn’t feel overly small back then….In fact, it felt perfect. And I know (my grandparents’) little trailer planted seeds in me…making me look forward to the day when I would get my own trailer. Even now, five trailers and one motor home later, I can still feel my grandparents’ influence.” -Melody Carson

….and to echo, with my own words that are not published in this book but are forever in my heart and on my blog…..

“As a child, I camped with my grandparents on Fernandina Beach in Florida. I can still smell the sulfur in the water and see the table that magically became my bed in their truck camper. When my grandparents left each of their grandchildren a small inheritance, I knew what I would do with part of their gift after camping for years with my own children. I bought a camper so we can honor their legacy and continue making memories with their great, great grandchildren.” -Kim Johnson