Lately I’ve been playing cards and board games with my husband after dinner. It’s a nice way to spend the evening. It feels like a throwback to earlier, more simple times. Instead of retiring in front of the TV or computer, we sit at the kitchen table and deal out the cards.

Our game of choice has been Rummikub, a spinoff of Gin Rummy, but tonight we are going to play Spite and Malice. My husband’s aunt Mila taught us Spite and Malice and every time we play we think of her. Unlike the name of the game we learned from her, Mila was free of malice. In fact, she was one of the kindest and calmest people I’ve ever met. She was a librarian with the Bakersfield Library and loved books, crossword puzzles and her cats. She and her husband Mike lived in a ‘50s modernist house with a pool that must have been quite stylish when it was built. Mike was a geologist and he left behind a collection of polished rocks and model ships. We inherited his rock collection and one night not long ago I sorted it by color and stacked the rocks by layers of color into a glass cylinder. Sorting through those rocks was a zen-like experience. As I held each rock I felt its weight in my hand and I examined its color and put it in a pile. I thought of Mike, surveying out in the oil fields of Bakersfield and collecting rocks along the way. He must have spent a lot of time carting home the rocks and polishing them.

Like sorting rocks, playing cards is a zen-like experience. You focus on the here and now, what’s right in front of you. You don’t think about tomorrow’s plans or yesterday’s disappointments. You focus in on the cards at hand and it feels freeing. I think everyone needs a few activities in their day like this. For some it may be gardening; for others music or painting or writing. Other people play online games like Farmville, maybe for the same effect. Maybe tomorrow my husband and I will start a game of Scrabble and get lost in words.