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| Image credit: Photo by FJTU (a veces on-line) on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons |
My husband Mark recently taught our 5-year-old daughter, Janie, the basics of chess, and she has been fascinated by it. As I was playing with her this morning (and she was instructing me where to move so that she could capture my king), I remembered when I first learned what the goal was and how the pieces moved. I was a few years older than Janie, old enough to develop a strategy. And my strategy was this: move the king to a corner and create a thick wall of pieces around him.
I imagined that if I thought hard enough about it, I could figure out how all the pieces ought to move to fit together, like a puzzle, to form this barrier. There was no thought of offense; my goal was merely to protect the king until my opponents battered themselves to death on my defenses. This never worked in practice, but for the few days or weeks I was interested in chess as a child, it seemed like it ought to.
Wouldn't a child psychologist have loved to analyze that? All those barriers in place, clutching tightly to my king. What was I locking up so tight and so early? What kind of a metaphor is that for the way I approached life? Neither playing to win nor for fun, but grasping on to what I didn't want to lose and risking the loss of everything in its defense.
As I watched Janie move her pieces around -- unafraid to leave her king unprotected, just exploring the board -- I thought (not for the first time) I'm glad she is herself rather than just like me.
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