There are times when the generation gap seems to loom so large that you think it can never be bridged.... And other times it surprises you by being scarcely there at all... And it was one of those "no gap, well, hardly any" occasions I am still smiling about.. One Saturday night, not long after I came back from America, we had two phone calls in quick succession...one from the younger son, in Kuala Lumpur, wanting advice from his father on how to drill holes in (rented) masonry walls.. And the other from our daughter wanting to know how to score a mazere in 500, and over what size call a mazere bid may be mounted... And I laughed and said things about how one was never too old to be neeeded as a parent, but I was surprised, just the same.. Seems that while I was overseas, our two elder grandaughters, 11 and 10 years old, discovered the game of 500, and soon had their mother and stepfather playing... And when they heard that we had always played, as a family, they couldn't wait for me to come home to we could show them how a six-hander worked.. So we did that on the last Thursday night of the school holidays, and all four girls came, which meant the two littles (2 and 3) were already in their dressing gowns and ready to watch videos as soon as we had finished the pizzas they brought with them, which was great, because we were in the middle of the `no gas' deprivation period, and I think they were worried we wouldn't be able to feed them.. Well, feed them we could have, but seat them we no longer can, since the polished wood table and chairs my mother left me seats only four and my old kitchen table, so much bigger, now holds potplants,and they call that progress, of course! **** But eventually we all filtered into the 'good' room, with all the new furniture I bought after our daughter- in- law-to-be told us what she though of what we were using, and we settled ourselves around the 'good' table, and squeezed in front of the 'good' sideboard, and realised we sorely missed the old buffet, on which all the chips and dips and twisties and nuts used to sit out of the way but within reach! So there we were, six cardplayers from three generations , two to each...and I played with the ten yearold, and the eleven yearold played with my husband, and the middle generation played with each other and bickered a lot, because her husband isn't as used as we are, knowing her playing style from long ago, to our daughter's lengthy deliberations, or her frequent lapses of concentration, so we found ourselves automatically shushing him a lot, which surprised him, I think.. And we all made mistakes in dealing, and my husband managed to play one whole game with the kitty in his hand, but on the whole, it went very well, until the two littlies decided they were fed up with it all and demanded to go home, NOW!! But the older girls were wideeyed at tales of how we had often, when our kids were teenagers, watched videos or played cards all night during holidays, and then had breakfast on the balcony..and how we lived on toasted cheese or toasted ham sandwiches all through the summer holidays.. Poor kids, their lives are so full of sport and training for sport that they have only one free day a week, and, therefore, one free evening ... And with two sets of parents, each with access, and two sets of grandparents, their lives are far from unstructured.... So we promised to have the older girls to stay one Saturday night and stay up all night playing 500, just as we used to do with their mother and HER friends.. And they can't wait, of course, because this is a concept totally foreign to them, and their mother will not oppose the idea because she remembers how she finally rebelled at the championship level, against the rigours of tennis circuit life, and goofed off well and truly, and partied for a whole year.. and has scarcely played since, though she is trying to play, a little, with them.. We haven't told the granddaughters that, not wanting them to realise there is life after sport.....but we DID tell them what a terrible card player their mother always was......which didn't matter because they said they had worked that out, already!! And I couldn't help wondering what their mother felt,bringing a new generation to play 500 in the same room as we spent so many cardplaying hours with OUR two generations..... But I figured it couldn't have felt too much the same.... I mean, this time SHE is the one wiping chocolate off little hands while HER children go to fetch towelling paper and nutbowls....and SHE is the one producing most of the FOOD, these days, too.. And the man she is married to now, partnering her at the opposite end of the table, is not one of the ones who had his feet under that table so many times... Except that it's a different table, too!.. The table we all played on spends most of its life in a window in our shop, now, as our main display table, but we used to bring it home for Christmas.. And now we all go to the daughter's place for That Occasion, it being more convenient for her with 5 kids, and for us with work right up to Christmas Eve, and with all but one of the Grandparents now passed on to the big table in the sky... And it's kind of nice to sit back and watch the new generation taking part in an old family ritual, bringing to it their own individual style and talents..... and extremely pleasing to find that we have produced a new generation that knows not to trump a partner's ace...something their grandfather could NEVER be trusted not to do.. Sometimes, just sometimes, the generation gap isn't there at all!

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