It’s been a hell of a past few years. We’ve all got our laments. Particularly during the pandemic, the losses really racked up—family, work, idealism—the list is long. But maybe that time built your community in some way, too.
Which is a major sideways jog to this week’s topic: Board games. Yes, you read that right. I loved them as a kid, could play Payday or Clue for hours with the pack of us who ran around Highview Drive. But, like football, I turned anti- over time. As an adult, I’d come to think board games were just another way to not talk to one another—a skill we’ve taken to great heights here in the Midwest. Another way, like social media, to make a conversation into a competition.
But mid-pandemic, I felt the urge to knit my community tighter. Our neighbors became like family. They called us together, of all things, to play a board game. One particular game saw us through family loss, heartbreaks, kids leaving home, pets passing, the fact that the one guy down the block mows every time a person tries to sleep in on the weekend.
The game was Wingspan, designed by Elizabeth Hargrave, who is a leader in more than just the avian sense (check out this list of Black voices in board games—I’ll be trying out Killer Snails soon). But Wingspan is about birds and ecosystems and it feels like wandering into a work of art. You build plentiful rookeries on individual boards that you trick out with food and eggs and nectar. I’ll spare you a complicated explainer of the rules, which others such as Mandy Patinkin have done far better. Instead, I invited the neighbor who started it all as a guest on this week’s Analog Mix Tape.
We’d play Wingspan in the morning and make something sweet to go with Carolyn’s awesome pandemic coffeemaker. We’d play at night and drink the best $13 bottle of wine I’ve found. We talked a lot, except for those times when we couldn’t—those early 2020s were rough. Later, I invited other friends into the game, to widen the circle. I send a picture to my sister every time I play, just to laugh together about the bushtit card.
I do think community, however you prefer to build yours, is one of the ways we heal. And community can come in surprising packages—board games, for chrissakes! Neighboring. Taking better care of each other. We are all, very clearly, still working on it.
Hear all about Wingspan (and other good community-building games) on this week’s Mix Tape. Feel free to chime in below with the game that brings you and yours together. Conversation and community—these are really the best things we have.
Press PLAY on this week’s Analog Mix Tape! It’s pretty great.
Enjoyed hearing about another good thing that came out of quarantine- playing games together. We play a game after Sunday dinner. Or we ask a wuestion that each person answers. Games are cool ways to create conversation in a world full of head-down scrolling. Thank you Jen.