games people play

I'm sure my late grandmother and great aunt are pleased, smiling serenely down on me. I've taken up bridge. As a child, they each tried to coax me into the game they adored so much, but back then, I just viewed it as stodgy.

Fast-forward to life in Nashville and at nearly forty years old, I've wised up. And I love bridge! It's not that I never liked game. Quite to the contrary, I've always loved card games. Specifically trick-taking games like bridge. As a child and teenager, my beloved late father would play poker and Bourre (pronounced "boo-ray"... I don't know how to insert and accent ague, so please forgive the French misstep) with me. Growing up in Jackson, Mississippi, I always saw Papa going off to drink bourbon and play Bourre with his fellow politicos and attorneys and I always wanted to go. Of course, he never took me, but he taught me how to master the Acadian-rooted game and we frequently played with family and friends. In college, I played a lot of spades. Probably too much.

But all those years of shuffling, dealing to your partner, reading his or her face and concealing your own to your opponents were sinking in and the spirit of my grandmother was there for every trick taken. So now I'm a bridge player.

Really, though, I'm resurrecting all games of my youth now that I'm a mother. I have an 11-year-old who is now at the perfect age for really "getting" games and a 6-year-old who tries to play everything we do. All that nostalgia and game playing has compelled me to start updating my game cabinet.

For cards, I'm loving these found at the Williamsburg Collection. All the charm of the antique image, but with the function of a repro. For all that

shuffling you'll be doing.

But if you are a proper Southern belle, you love a monogram, so perhaps you are more into these found at Dabney Lee at Home. I'm nuts about the mod colorways and prints. Very Valley of the Dolls. (Note the great monogrammed Lucite trays and monogrammed Lucite ice buckets from this site as well. Bookmark it.) The color and monogram choices seem endless and would make a perfect hostess gift for a weekend away.

And who didn't play backgammon growing up? I can't tell you how many beach vacations were spent playing backgammon in the 1970's of my youth. Jonathan Adler, the king of the happy and snappy, has reinterpreted the backgammon board in needlepoint. Love. I can't copy the image for you here, but check it out at his web site.