I’m participating in Crystal Stine’s Behind the scenes link-up today.

You can check out other entries here or find out how to share your own here.

This is my first Behind The Scenes post and the hardest part was choosing the photo. My search revealed that I may have a slight addiction to taking photos of boats at sea but somehow those photos seemed lonely to me today. So I finally settled on this one:

memories…

The quality on this photo is a bit off because I took it with my crappy phone but I think you know the Milton Bradley version Chutes and Ladder but here in the Trinidad where I grew up this one is called Snakes and Ladders. I took this photo on August 16th 2010…bless my crappy phone for the date. I found this very old game, when I began the emotional and gargantuan task of packing up my mother’s things nine days after her death. It was surprisingly well-preserved despite a little stain on the back and signs of age at the fold.

I could not believe that she still had it. She saved it long after we lost the markers and dice….long after we stopped playing those games.

LONG after we were all grown up and too old to play games like that.

She cherished it.

I immediately snapped this shot and sent it to my brother and sister. We never knew she kept this little reminder of our childhood. Snakes and ladders was one of the first games she taught us how to play.

As I sat on her bed, among some of the other little keepsakes she’d kept over the years, I saw her sitting on the floor with us as children and playing this same snakes and ladders. If any one of us won more than three times, mummy would cheat…yep cheat to win. Yes folks my mother hated losing…to her children. I saw her laughing when she got caught too. She was not afraid to have fun or let her inner child out.  Games night at our house used to be quite interesting.

I laughed. I cried. And that was pretty much the end of the “packing up” that day.