Chess

Some of my fondest memories of childhood include playing chess with my father. It was time I spent with just him. My mother and I spent time shopping, trading jokes and laughter. My father and I shared books and chess. I haven't played in years and I'm honestly no good at it. But today we bought a chessboard and sat down with the girls to teach them.

Imogen's attention span toward it (and I suspect, her aptitude) was greater than Genevieve's. First we taught the names of the pieces and then we set up the board. While Imogen concentrated on this, Genevieve made the king and queen kiss. The differences between my daughters are very apparent.

We taught them how the pieces moved and set up very simple situations to teach capturing. Imogen was thrilled at such revelations like when a knight is on a white square, all the squares he is covering are black and when a bishop starts on a certain color, he will only ever touch that color square. She was excited by every capture. She traded her queen for a knight and congratulated herself. Jeremy played intentionally badly so she could find ways out of as many checking situations as possible and that is mostly what her game consisted of. No plan was formulated, no attack was mounted. But who cares. She had fun and it was her first game. And she gets to spend time with her daddy, who is much better at chess than me, and will probably play many more games with her than I will.