Last night, after I'd had a very difficult evening coping with adoption-related trauma, my 15-yr-old son asked me to play a game of Scrabble. I do love Scrabble. I kinda wanted to spend some 1:1 time with him. But, phew, 9:30pm after a long day is not the best moment to suggest a board game.

But he was so earnest. And then he found my grandmother's Scrabble board. She must have played hundreds of games on this board. I was not her favorite contestant--too young. She wanted a challenge. She wanted my Aunt Janet who died a few weeks ago and is now buried right next to my grandma.

Aunt Janet was a Scrabble fiend! She came from a difficult home, was pregnant before she graduated from high school, then married to my uncle at 18. After having three kids in three years she quietly decided to become a nurse and somehow put herself through night school to earn a bachelor's degree and become an RN. She was, truly, the smartest person in my family and those three kids all went on to become highly successful people.

If there is anyone I should look to as a hopeful example of how young girls with a difficult start can go on to become happy, successful adults, it is my Aunt Janet. My grandparents, her in-laws, became the parents and role models she never had growing up. They had already taken in two other foster children (when their biological mother died and, without warning my grandparents, left a will asking them to take her kids) and Janet was welcomed in, too.

So, we played Scrabble. First game--I trounced him! (He learned the consequence of playing a word I would challenge! Hah!!) Second game--he would've beaten me if he hadn't drawn a Q on his next to last turn. I was about to lose since I'd just drawn a Z I couldn't get rid of, but then he played ACID and that gave me the chance to make ZIG. Final score: 181 to 189 after we subtracted for leftover tiles.

When we were done I looked at the board and realized we'd had a bit of a Halloween theme going. Unconsciously? Or maybe on the Day of the Dead the veil is thin and I couldn't help but conjure up images of my Grandma and Aunt--two of the nicest little old ladies you ever met--hunched over this very board playing a cut-throat game one of them would be too angry to discuss for days afterwards, now buried next to each other with their husbands on either side.

A word list to remember a nurse on the Day of the Dead: DEAD, EVE, BOUND, POX, MUCUS, VEIN, WEEPER, ACID, WOE, GOD, HOLY. Every time I strategically landed on a Double Letter or Triple Word I could feel their mutual approval.