Saturday afternoon I got home from setting up the booth at APHA to two emails. One from Luna and another from Mr. Blankbaby himself. They had both written to invite me to see The Chronicles of Narnia with them that evening. I love impromptu gatherings with blogging friends, and was luckily able to join them.

Sitting in that darkened theater, watching as Lucy, Edmond, Susan and Peter played Hide and Seek, my memories of playing that game came flooding into the featured section of my brain. When my family first moved to Portland from LA, we moved into a house that was twice the size as the one we had lived in before. My sister and I hadn’t made many friends yet and our large, empty house just begged to have games of Hide and Seek played in it. And so we played. With my parents.

My parents prided themselves on coming up with good hiding places, and often looked up to find adequate spots to conceal their adult frames. Most memorable are the instances when my mom hid on top of the refrigerator, and my dad perched atop the linen closet in the downstairs bathroom. They taught me to think creatively when it came to playing games, and made me think hard to best their secret spots.

We probably only did this a handful of times, but the memories of those few hours of play are vivid and special. My parents played games with my sister and me many times, but mostly of the card and board game variety. It was rare that they’d let loose, count to 100 hundred and run around the house trying to uncover exactly where Raina and I were concealed. But man, I’m grateful for the times that they did.