Gameplay

My name settled at the top of the randomly generated list. I could hear my mom’s sigh of relief even though she was on FaceTime mute. I slid her a side glance and she gave me a thumbs up—she wasn’t supposed to be hearing any of this. The lawyer had us all acknowledge one more time, through a head nod, that we agreed to distribute our grandparents’ items through a draft style selection process. We gave thumbs ups through the Zoom react feature. Let the games begin. 

For as long as I can remember, there was always a fraught relationship between my mom and her siblings and their parents, who I called Mimi and Pops. When I was little, they acted like grandparents out of a storybook, showering me with love and presents every time they saw me. I treasured summers spent at their house in northern Wisconsin and golf cart rides around their neighborhood in Amelia Island, Florida. 

However, as I got older I became acutely aware of the fights they picked through their  divisive political statements belittling my working mom. Despite their incessant criticisms and passive-aggressive jabs, they continued to show up to each of my childhood performances. But that lasted only until my third grade class show. As we sat around the kitchen table eating pizza to celebrate the show, Mimi abruptly made an announcement: the summer home that had been in my mom’s side of the family for generations was on the market. Even at 10 years old, I understood the gravity of what she said and I burst into tears. My mom looked at my dad and told him to take me out of the kitchen. I never spoke with my grandparents again. Suddenly, they were cut out of my life. 

As I grew up, I avoided giving a straight answer when someone asked if I was seeing my grandparents for the holidays. I would say they were old and it was difficult for them to travel—which probably was true anyways. But really, my family was more concerned with what would happen when one of them passed away, rather than whose house they were going to for Christmas. 

 Six years passed between my third-grade performance and Pops passing away. The funeral coincided with my high school state track meet, which excused me from attending the services. But my mom and her siblings were all present, forced to break the silence with Mimi, who once again made an announcement: They had been cut out of the will. I don’t really know how the rest of the conversation went beyond that, but I think the blanks can be assumed. The silence resumed, continuing for another few years, until in mid-October, when Mimi passed away. 

By the point of Mimi’s death, she had been living in a retirement community called Osprey Village. The employees at the retirement community would be involved with funeral services as little or as much as the respective families wanted—Osprey Village planned Mimi’s whole funeral. The service was held over a Zoom call, on which my cousins and I all read psalms out of the Bible. I had been to church three times in my whole life. When the hour was over, the director of Osprey Village ended the call and I went back to watching Tik Toks. 

Throughout the next month everyone was just in a holding pattern, unsure what moves to take next, both emotionally and legally. I was more concerned about packing up my items to go to Brown for my first semester.  It was in early December when my cousins and I got an email from my grandmother’s lawyer. Our parents were not included in the will and it was up to the grandchildren to decide which next steps to take. I was inundated with emails filled with legal jargon that I subsequently spent the next several months learning

My cousins and I had a quick FaceTime early in the week and decided that a draft system was going to be the only fair way to distribute the items. Each of our parents had certain possessions they were really vying for us to select. We were pawns in a game we didn’t want to be playing. I almost laughed at the absurdity of me sitting alone, in the middle of January, in my dorm at Brown picking items from a house 1500 miles away.But I played along and prepared myself for the gametime decisions I’d face.  We all got on the Zoom call on a weekday evening, at a time that both accommodated my class discussion section and my aunt’s pickup of her kids from daycare. The lawyer shared her screen so we could see a random name generator website. I’ve never been good at things that call for luck, and I reminded my mom of the fact. But, somehow I ended up at the top of the list. 

Growing up, I would watch the show Storage Wars with my dad when my mom was on business trips. For those unfamiliar with the A&E channel reality show, locked storage units are auctioned off without their bidders knowing what’s inside. My lack of personal attachment to the objects meant that I may as well have been choosing sight unseen. With my mom on FaceTime propped up against my window sill overlooking Andrews Quad, the rotation began. We all methodically moved through the selections of the items with the lawyers on-site in our grandparents’ home to show us any piece we had questions about. We were also all equipped with an online document that had pictures of most of the items in the home that we could use as a reference. My mom had bolded and ranked the items she wanted me to prioritize in the selection: a necklace, an elephant figurine, and a dining room table, among othersThe lawyers were adamant that our parents not be involved. I broke the rules of the game.  

After two hours, we were finally done dividing up the larger items. I had schoolwork to do and my older cousins had toddlers to take care of. I hit the red “End” button on the Zoom screen and my mom immediately unmuted. “I’m tired,” I said and hung up the phone. I breathed out a sigh of… relief? Frustration? I was just thankful that it was over. I stood up from my desk and walked across the room to open my door to my new world I had been trying to create, untarnished by familial competition. I saw my week-old friends scattered throughout the hallway partaking in treasured “Hallway Time,” a COVID-conscious way to socialize. I took a seat and the only friend I told about what I was just doing looked up at me. How was I supposed to explain the brokenness of my family dynamics within one week of knowing people? Not exactly the recipe for making new friends. I said, “It was ok” and slid down against the wall and settled into whatever chatter had been ongoing. 

According to my mom’s standards, the whole process went great. She got exactly what she wanted, such as the dining room set from her own grandmother’s house and countless art pieces and jewelry items. According to my aunt’s standards, she was devastated to have missed out on her favorite chair that now sits in my uncle’s home in London. According to my standards, it was another disappointing chapter in my family story. As an only child, I craved a relationship with extended family. When it was the holidays and classmates would post an Instagram picture hugging their grandparents or laughing with their cousins, I would quietly close the app and go help my mom in the kitchen. As the youngest of six cousins, with the closest in age to me being 25, I wrongly thought that going through the shared, wild experience of suddenly being in charge of our grandparents’ entire possessions would bond us. If anything it left us further apart. The text conversations with my cousins now consist only of “happy birthdays” back and forth. 

The following week after the selection took place, I signed a waiver allowing my parents to pick up my selected items in lieu of me—since I was in Rhode Island. I continued on with my first semester at Brown and would respond to follow-up emails from the lawyers periodically. When I returned home to Fort Lauderdale at the end of the semester, I felt like I was walking into a new house. Where our chocolate brown, cushioned ottoman once stood there was now a sharp, stone table. New artwork adorned the walls from places my parents and I had never visited. The only thing I really wanted from the whole process was a small, jade elephant from China that now sits atop my desk at home—a reminder of a game I never want to play again.