Tuesday nights. The girls: Sis, Andrea, Lillian. Entenmann’s cake. Daddy and I banished from the kitchen except to grab a half chocolate donut or two-inch square crumb cake on a half paper plate. If one of us got hungry, the other would hear:

“One bam. Three dots. Red. Five crack. Soap.”
or
“I’ll call that.”
or
“Mah Jongg!”

Then it was back to the living room for us, making sure to swing the kitchen door shut so we could hear the TV and not the cackle of voices and the clacking of tiles.

But it wasn’t just an Entenmann’s fix that would pull me from the couch to the kitchen. It was the sound of the tiles, the ivory on formica, the clicking and clattering as they were turned upside down, the mixing and moving until one of eight hands started building a new wall. It was the colorful and curious markings on each tile – red, green, blue, black – the dots, lines, squiggles. The only tile I understood was marked “Joker,” and sometimes I would walk behind each of “the girls” to see who had one. My mother would raise her eyebrows and cock her head to the side, gesturing me to be quiet, twisting her mouth to hide her grin. Then she’d chase me away with, “Just take a half, Lisa,” nodding toward the donuts. “There’s other people here.”

My mother, a second-generation Italian-American who grew up on Cleveland Street in East New York, learned how to play from her Jewish neighbor down the street at age 11. 70 years later, she is still getting together weekly with friends old and new, still devoted to the game and “the girls,” still challenged to get that “beautiful hand” and win her 35 cents. Now that she’s long retired and my father has passed away, she plays two to three days a week, and goes on Mah Jongg tournaments in the Poconos and on cruises. Over week-long sprints at the Poconos, the girls will play more than 125 games.

“Your mom should put her Mah Jongg money in a trust fund,” my Aunt Angela tells me. My aunt, seven years my mother’s junior, has probably taught as many Long Island Catholics to play Mah Jongg as my mom. Together, these two sisters are a force among the largely Jewish and Chinese communities who play the game by tradition.

I didn’t know how to play myself until my early forties. I found a friend in Connecticut, Diane, who also grew up in a Mah Jongg home, and together we were determined to start our own group. My mother came up from Long Island to teach us when we found five to commit; when she left we took things slow. We took things slow for five years – playing four games a night to my mom’s clan who played 18 per sitting.

To our credit, we served more than Entenmann’s cake – our spreads were a smorgasbord of Trader Joe’s snacks, vegetable and fruit platters, fresh-baked pies, coconut shrimp. And when it was our turn to pick a tile from the table, we could hold it hostage in our fingers up to 10 minutes if we had a story or a TV show or an article to share. On Thursday nights we lay our hearts and minds on our kitchen tables like the tiles – mixing them all up, surprising and challenging each other, tossing the unpredictable in with the predictable.

In those five years I learned what the game was really about. It was my Mah Jongg group that saw me through my divorce – the escape from an unhappy home to the hope of a new one, with four children in tow, aged 7 – 16. One of the girls found space in her basement for our boxes so I wouldn’t have to pay for self-storage when my now family-of-five moved to a temporary apartment. Another bought me my first tool kit – with a flower-patterned hammer – when we moved into our new house. And Diane – she kept me company throughout the divorce, when other friends and neighbors fled – visiting often during the heavy months of negotiations when tempers and fears were high and emotional support low.

When Diane turned 50, I bought her her own Mah Jongg set – with tiles the color of the rainbow, sleeves that pushed the walls out firmly and gently, and jokers labeled “Diane.” How else to thank her for her friendship?

I could only imagine the anxieties my mother shared with her Mah Jongg group back in Long Island during my divorce. Whether on the phone or in person, she never showed them to me. Instead it was always, “So what’s the next step Lisa?” or “Let’s take one day at a time. What do you have to do today?” or “That’s over. Let’s not think about that anymore.” Or “How can I help? You’re not in this alone.”

My mother received a new Mah Jongg set a year after Diane’s. How could I not do the same? Plus I wanted to be delighted when a “Millie” was dealt to me on the holidays, and to spread the good feeling among her friends when they placed one on their racks during their weekly games. To me, a “Millie” was never just a joker – it was joy and confidence and safekeeping, all smooth in the palm of your hand.

Recently, I took my kids up to my mother’s country house in the Poconos for Memorial Day. They range in age now from 15 to 24. On our last day up there, two of them finally got my mother and I to sit down to play a round without the other ladies.

At the onset of the second game, my daughter Jessica’s face stiffened after she was dealt her 13 tiles.

“Let me help you there Jess,” my mom said softly. She scooted her chair next to my daughter, and without a blink at the 2011 card moved her tiles around. “See what you got there?” Jessica’s eyes widened with relief.

“You know Jessica,” my mom said, “you could sit there feeling paralyzed, like you’ve got nothing, and get scared that you have no move to make. But there’s always a move. You just have to look at it with a fresh eye, and don’t get yourself stuck on one hand.”

Her advice to my daughter on how to handle any Mah Jongg hand she is dealt reminded me of all the times throughout my life my mother has nudged my focus toward a solution, a next step, a new perspective. To this day, when Melancholy takes a grip of my heart, Millie takes a grip of my hand, and moves me. Onward. Always.

I’m guessing that’s why so many women have enjoyed playing Mah Jongg with Millie over the years. It’s not just a game for her. It’s a way of life.

64 years ago, my sister Millie taught me and our mother how to play Mah Jongg, when I was just 10 years old. I play with her often now, in various groups. Millie has taught many, many people over the years, and most are still playing today because of her, passing it on to their family and friends.

Recently my sister and I were at a tournament in Atlantic City for the weekend. I went over to her table to see how she was doing and she told me she was having a hard time seeing the card. I said, “Really? I’m having trouble too!” It took a little while before we caught on that we had mistakenly picked up each other’s glasses at the last game. After we traded glasses, we started playing much, much better.

This reminds me of the time we mistakenly picked up each other’s keys when we walked into a store together. When we came out, my remote starter wasn’t working and neither was hers. We both thought our batteries had died at the same time and went into Radio Shack to get new batteries. When our cars were STILL not starting, we finally figured things out.

My daughter Lorraine thinks my sister and I should have our own sitcom. But we’d much rather spend our time playing Mah Jongg!

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I recently went up to the Poconos to visit my grandmother before heading out to college. She was up with Aunt Angela and their friends Theresa and Grace. I stayed over night so I got pulled into the Mah Jongg mania. My grandmother taught me how to play when I was just a kid, so I knew what I was doing – kinda…

When I sat down to play at Aunt Angela’s kitchen table, I thought they’d all be talking about this and that, you know, with all their wisdom at their age. But their talk is always about the game they’re playing. Once you’re in the Mah Jongg world, that’s all there is. You come in and want to talk about something else – you’re an outcast. At one point Theresa mentioned she wanted to zip line across the Safari some day, and nobody wanted to hear about it. They’re so engaged in the game itself – who’s taking the other person’s hand, who’s the big winner, who lost 15 cents (not a bad hand), or 45 cents for the night (not a bad night). The 2 girls, Ang and my grandma Millie, are the big winners almost always. I heard my grandmother has enough money in her Mah Jongg fund to play for the rest of her life.

The girls play from 2, 3 in the afternoon until midnight. Grandma’s always the first to go to bed, and almost always the winner of the night. She wins because she’s very good at what she does – I’ve always seen her that way too. She’s engaged, practical, and efficient at whatever she takes on. With Mah Jongg, she knows the card like the back of her hand, and thinks ahead of how she’s going to handle each hand she’s dealt. And she can read your  hand too – she’ll withhold tiles to stop others from making their hand. She plays self-defensively, does the best she can do, and then moves on to the next hand.

Grandma has always been about moving on. Like a couple years ago, when my cousin, her grandson Chris, was in a plane crash. He was co-piloting the plane but walked away unscathed. Grandma found out he was okay, said her prayers, and then barely mentioned it again. She says her hour of prayers every morning and then faces whatever the day brings her.

My grandmother’s not a dweller – she’s about the present and the future. That’s how I am too. The past is in the past. For us, it’s all about moving on. What’s the hand we need to deal with next?

Lisa K, one of my friends in NYC, decided to start a Mah Jongg group. She invited me and 2 others to join her. I was the only one who knew the rules, but it had been over 30 years since I learned them from my mother, Millie. In fact, my best memory of growing up in a Mah Jongg home was playing with the tiles, swishing them around and building with them rather than actually playing a game.

So I invited my mother and her sister, my Aunt Angela, to come into NYC and teach us how to play. Well, they very generously made the trip from Long Island to come in and teach us the game, announcing that they’d be very patient if we won what they called a “baby mah jongg” hand (an easy hand). Baby Mah Jongg indeed! I was the only one of my friends who could remember even one rule, and after 5-6 very challenging attempts our group dissolved into “lunch with the ladies.”

To this day, I prefer watching Millie play than playing myself – her concentration, speed, and best of all, that small secret smile when she picks up her winning tile – are all a joy to watch.

In 2009, I married my high school sweetheart. We didn’t have a honeymoon fund, but we did have the Poconos house. A few years earlier, my wife had made a film about the house for a graduate school project. She never met my grandfather, Millie’s husband, but she felt like she got to know him through the family stories and old pictures from the Poconos house. She thought spending a few days there for our honeymoon with Millie would be fitting.

You can’t go to the Poconos with Millie and not play Mah Jongg. It would be like having a wedding without a honeymoon. So instead of going to some exotic place and staying in a hotel, we stayed in the guest room and played Mah Jongg on the porch. We had just gotten married, which meant we were now a family, and to us, Mah Jongg means family. We play it with my brothers during family gatherings, with Millie and Angela when we visit them, and any other time we’re together with our extended family. We began our married life with Mah Jongg and with Millie, immersed in family tradition. We would not have wanted it any other way.

And as I write this, I can hear Millie’s first great-grandchild, my daughter, babbling to my wife in the next room. The clacking of tiles on kitchen tables that filled the childhoods of my father and his sisters will be a key sound for my daughter’s childhood as well. I look forward to the day when she is old enough to play a round of Mah Jongg with Millie. And knowing her Great Grandma Millie, that will be the day my daughter learns how to lose graciously!

As a side note – some years ago I was traveling from Pittsburgh to New York by airplane. I put my backpack through the X-ray scanner, and a security person pulled me aside. He said he needed to check a suspicious looking item in my bag. I wondered what I could possibly be carrying that would look suspicious on the X-ray. He pulled a few things out, then pulled out my Mah Jongg set. He opened it, saw the designs on the tiles, and said, “Oh, I know this. My grandma plays this.”

“Mine too,” I said.

Grandma is known for teaching you a game, and then beating you so bad you don’t even have a chance – whether it’s card games, board games, or any other type of games. When I first learned how to play Mah Jongg with Grandma, it was so fast-paced that I knew I needed to learn quickly in such a competitive environment or I would drown in a group of Mah Jongg experts.

When playing with Grandma, you need to know what hand you are going to make fast, and then quickly change your mind when you know your hand isn’t going to work out. Just remember you only have a “Millie” second* to make up your mind whether you want a tile, because before you know it your turn will be passed or your tile will be called. You will be sitting in a cloud of dust from the “Wind” of Grandma Millie’s speed.

I have been playing Mah Jongg for only a couple of years, and I still could never compare to someone who really mastered the game. One could only feel like a “Dot” in the classic painting by George Seurat, in Grandma’s real-life masterpiece of knowledge and skill. You will learn a lot and very quickly as long as you aren’t “Dragon” with your decision on a play, and you don’t “Crack” under pressure.

I realize that the family becomes closer as we sit around the table turning into a bunch of “Jokers” as the game progresses. It’s great to spend time with family and learn how to lose against a great woman and teacher.

Eventually my “Flower” will blossom and I will master the great skills needed in Mah Jongg. For now, I wait as I hear the tiles being called, knowing I’m only one tile away, but I always hear “BAM… MAH JONGG!”

But in all seriousness I love playing the game and learning from one of the greatest women I know. Thank you Grandma for teaching me this game.

*A “Millie” second is much shorter than a millisecond!