In the old neighborhood, Pinehurst, the family who lived behind us, the Browns, had two boys and a mother with whom we played marbles. Mrs. Brown loved to take on the neighborhood boys. She was a tall wiry woman. None of us could look her straight in the eye until she knelt to line up a shot. She wore a red kerchief she hoped would keep her black curls under control, but didn’t. She always smelled of Clorox or Ajax or furniture polish. And she had a collection of marbles, especially cat’s eyes, we all envied.
After school I would gather with other neighborhood boys in the Browns’ yard waiting for her to finish her work and come out to play. Sometimes, while we waited, we’d compete with one another. But the real competition didn’t begin until Mrs. Brown joined us. She carried two socks filled with marbles we were determined to win from her. You could buy a mesh bag containing five or six marbles at the local market, but to get a sockful the size of Mrs. Brown’s you had to be a dedicated collector or a great competitor.
The door swung open, banging the kitchen wall. My mother turned from what she was mixing at the counter as I burst into the kitchen. “What’s the matter, Michael?” she said as I rushed to her sobbing.
“Mrs. Brown took my marbles,” I choked out between sobs. “It’s not fair. It’s not fair.”
“What do you mean she took them?” my mother asked looking at me through soft brown eyes that never failed to calm the squalls of a five-year-old’s spirit? “Do you mean she beat you again at marbles?”
“Yes,” I screamed, “but it’s not fair. I’m just a little kid and she took them all.”
“Come over here and sit down,” my mother said wiping her delicate hands on her apron, “I’m making some cookies; they’ll be ready in a few minutes. Come over here and wait,” she said, putting her arm around me and leading me toward the table. My eyes stung with the bitterness of the tears I was still choking back, but the tenderness in her voice and the smell of tollhouse cookies were having their effect. My mind was turning away from the anger I felt about the lost marbles. “Wipe your face and blow your nose,” my mother said, handing me a paper napkin. “Sit down while I get some milk for your cookies.”
I sat at the table drinking milk and eating cookies, recovering from the heartache of my lost marbles as she talked to me in her sweet voice. “There’s a difference between someone taking something from you, and you losing it to someone in a game, Michael. You keep going over to Mrs. Brown every time you get a new bag of marbles and challenging her to come out and play with you. And when she does and wins you get angry.”
“Yeah but she’s got so many marbles and most of them belong to little kids like me.”
“That’s because other kids in the neighborhood want to play with her just like you, and for the same reason; because she’s good and it’s a challenge to beat her.”
“Yeah, but she shouldn’t keep our marbles even if she wins. We’re just kids, and she’s way older.”
“Maybe you don’t appreciate it, Michael, but Mrs. Brown is trying to teach you and your friends a lesson.”
What lesson?”
“I believe she’s trying to show you that you have to learn how to lose.” She put her arm around me and kissed me on the cheek. “You have to learn how to accept losses; we all do.”
“Well, I don’t want to learn that; I don’t like losing. It’s not fair.”
“I know,” she said brushing the hair back from my brow with fingers as tender as a
baby’s breath and pulling me tightly to her. I smelled the sweet scent of lilac and felt the reassuring warmth of her body.
Two years after this incident I would lose my mother, another difficult lesson in learning to deal with loss in my life.