Eat That Cake

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1990 was a big year. At the beginning of it, I caught Donnie Wahlberg’s sweaty shirt at a New Kids on the Block concert. At the end, I turned 16 and helped my parents negotiate their divorce. The middle brought the National Bridge Championship in Boston, where I fell in love with the city and fell in love with a boy for the first time. It’s also where I learned that my mom is a really big fish, however peculiar the pond.

I’d been to the Nationals before, but never as a caddy. Every childhood vacation was attached to a bridge tournament. Game play lasted roughly 12 hours every day, with a dinner break in the middle. There was always a childcare program - run by the hotel, the local YMCA, or a staff hired just for the tournament. There were field trips and crafts, movie nights and snacks. It was fun in theory, but also weird and lonely.

I remember touring Baltimore with a group of kids, not one that I could call a friend. I remember an old amusement park near Toronto, but I can’t remember the name of the girl I hung out with that day. I remember getting caught on barbed wire on a YMCA hike in New Mexico, the sound of my skin tearing as the young counselor clumsily freed me, the way the dry desert dust caked to my legs like clay, when mixed with blood.

Most of all, I remember dinner breaks, the safety I felt experiencing a new city with my parents for a change. Of course, through dinner, they talked about bridge. Bridge, bridge, bridge. But my mother always tried to check in with me on some level, in her own distracted way. And in the mornings, before the tournament started, she always took me swimming.

I know. It makes me sad too. But it didn’t at the time. When you’re in your childhood, you’re just in it. Happiness is relative, and longing is hard to put your finger on. It’s not like I had it that bad. I know that my parents loved me. They just seemed to love bridge - not more - more passionately.

The Boston tournament was different. I wasn’t shuffled off to daycare; I was part of the show. I was making money and making friends with others like me - kids who hadn’t seen their folks for days, but at 15, rather enjoyed the freedom of running around a hotel with little parental guidance.