Latest / The Order of the Tile: Secrets from the American Mahjong Table / At This Table, We Remember.

Transcript

At This Table, We Remember. · The Order of the Tile: Secrets from the American Mahjong Table

0:25
My dearest table guests, welcome back.
0:29
This is the order of the tile, and I am Prim.
0:33
You are invited to enjoy issue #10 and before Prim says a
0:38
single word about strategy or sets or the summer circuit, she
0:42
would like to stop. She would like to ask you to
0:44
stop with her. At this table.
0:47
We remember This is the Issue of the Year in which a weekly
0:52
newsletter about a parlour game in a community that is
0:55
overwhelmingly made-up of American women has to
0:58
acknowledge that the Monday coming is not an ordinary
1:01
Monday. It is Memorial Day, the day this
1:05
country has set aside to remember the soldiers who did
1:08
not come home. Prim has family who served and
1:13
who serves and family who did not come home, and she is not
1:17
willing to publish an issue about flower pairs and push away
1:21
without first saying plainly and with no ornament that the table
1:25
we sit at this weekend is the table their sacrifice made
1:29
possible. She would like to say one more
1:32
thing before the issue begins because the community this week
1:36
has been asking for it in quiet ways and Prim would like to
1:40
answer clearly. There are a great many active
1:43
duty and veteran women in this community.
1:47
There are Military Wives and military mothers and military
1:51
daughters at tables across this country who play this game
1:56
precisely because the game is a respite, A ritual, a gathering
2:00
that has nothing to do with duty and everything to do with
2:04
presents. The joy these women find at the
2:07
table is not separate from their service or from the service of
2:11
the people they love. It is connected to it because
2:16
the purpose of everything they do and everything their people
2:19
do is to protect the possibility of a Thursday afternoon at a
2:23
kitchen table with four friends, a rack and a wall.
2:28
Prim would like this issue to be for them.
2:32
The tagline for this week was going to be something else.
2:35
Prim has changed it. At this table.
2:38
We remember that is the tagline, that is the frame.
2:43
Everything in these pages this week is in service of it.
2:47
We will still talk strategy because Prim would not honour
2:51
this community by stopping the work.
2:54
We will talk about the discipline of the hand that
2:56
cannot close, which Prim believes is the 2026 cards Quiet
3:01
Memorial Day lesson. We will talk about how to
3:04
acknowledge the day at your Thursday game without
3:07
awkwardness. We will meet military women,
3:10
past and present, for whom this game has been a refuge, A ritual
3:16
and in some cases a lifeline. We will look at the role this
3:21
game played in Jewish American women's wartime circles and in
3:24
veterans hospitals after the war.
3:27
And we will spend a long, careful moment with the sets and
3:30
mats that carry the visual language of patriotism without
3:34
cheapening it. Pull up your chair.
3:37
The wall is built. Let us begin.
3:42
Let us begin with what everyone is talking about.
3:45
This is the draw. The community pulse this week
3:51
has been unusually gentle, and Prim thinks it is because the
3:55
calendar ahead is a serious one. The Facebook groups have been
3:59
quiet about the typical fare. Fewer set drops, fewer
4:03
tournament debates. What Prim has seen in the last
4:07
72 hours, in larger numbers than she expected, are posts from
4:12
women serving whose husbands or partners served, whose mothers
4:16
and or fathers served, whose sons and daughters are serving,
4:20
whose grandmothers played Mashong on weekends when their
4:24
own husbands were overseas. The community is telling its own
4:28
stories this week in its own time, and the Mashong part of
4:32
the story is, for many of them, the part that held the rest of
4:37
the story together. Prim has been reading these
4:41
posts all morning. She would like the rest of the
4:44
community to read them, too. Scroll slowly this week, comment
4:49
when you have something real to say.
4:51
Do not scroll past a post from a Gold Star mother without
4:55
pausing. The community has always been
4:59
more than a set of tiles and this week is the week we are
5:02
reminded of it. The Mediterranean cruise
5:06
returned to port this week and the photos that came out of the
5:10
cruise are, as predicted, breathtaking.
5:15
Prim will post a round up in the next issue when the community
5:18
has had time to debrief for this week.
5:21
Suffice it to say that the first major destination of the summer
5:25
calendar executed well. Destination Mahjong delivered.
5:31
The players who went had a remarkable time.
5:33
The next wave of destination events is now within the
5:36
registration window for several of you and set your rack.
5:39
Below will have the particulars. One piece of news worth
5:44
flagging. Several Jewish community centres
5:47
across the country have announced that they will be
5:50
hosting Memorial Day weekend community play sessions, many of
5:54
them with a small donation component directed to veterans
5:57
organisations. Prim will list the ones she has
6:00
confirmed below. If your local JCC is running
6:04
one, Prim would gently suggest that this is a better Memorial
6:08
Day activity than whatever the hardware store is advertising.
6:12
Sit down, play a hand, give a few dollars.
6:16
Remember the reason the day exists.
6:19
The game you love can do good work on a day that asks
6:23
something of all of us. Which brings us to crack the
6:28
card. The hand that cannot close on
6:32
the 2026 card. Prim has been thinking all week
6:37
about which Crack the Card lesson fits this issue, and she
6:41
has landed on one that is a little unconventional because
6:44
the weak deserves it. The lesson is about the hand
6:48
that cannot close. Every player in this community
6:52
knows the feeling. You are in round 8, The wall is
6:57
thin, the tiles you need have been thrown and called and are
7:01
gone, and the rack in front of you is not going to win this
7:04
game. The question is what you do from
7:07
that moment forward. Most players have never been
7:10
taught an answer. The 2026 card, more than any
7:14
recent card, rewards players who have thought carefully about
7:18
this exact situation. And Prim would like to walk you
7:21
through it. Because the discipline of the
7:23
closing out hand is the mahjong analogue of a much larger kind
7:27
of discipline. And she thinks it is the lesson
7:30
that belongs in this issue #1 the hand is over.
7:35
The game is not. The first thing to understand,
7:41
and the thing most players get wrong is that the moment your
7:44
own hand becomes unwinnable is not the moment the game becomes
7:48
unimportant. The game continues.
7:51
Other players still have hands they are trying to close.
7:54
The discards you throw from this moment forward are information
7:58
the rest of the table is reading.
8:00
The calls you make or do not make still matter.
8:05
A player who mentally checks out when her own hand is lost has
8:10
forfeited not just her own game, but her participation in the
8:13
game. Everyone else is still playing,
8:16
and this is a subtle but real violation of the communal
8:19
contract of the table. You finish the game with
8:23
attention, or you do not deserve the seat you are sitting in.
8:27
Prim will say it that plainly because she believes it #2 the
8:34
defensive pivot is a form of honour.
8:37
Once your hand cannot close, your job changes.
8:41
You are no longer building, you are defending.
8:46
Your task for the remainder of the game is to make it harder
8:50
for the player who is closest to winning to close her hand.
8:55
This is not petty, this is not sour.
8:58
This is the game as it is actually designed.
9:02
Every tile you throw is either a gift to someone or a stone on
9:06
her path. Read the exposures at the table,
9:10
read the discard pile, identify who is closest, and throw the
9:14
tiles that are least useful to her.
9:17
A player who executes the defensive pivot well, even with
9:21
a hand that is long dead, often changes the outcome of the game.
9:26
Not her outcome, someone else's. That shift is a form of honour.
9:33
The closing out player who plays defence well is the player who
9:37
earned her seat. The closing out player who
9:41
throws whatever she feels like because she has given up, has
9:45
given up on more than her own hand.
9:47
Do not be her number 3. The closed hand as a category
9:54
teaches this discipline. The 2026 card has several hand
10:00
families that are best approached as closed hands,
10:03
which means the entire hand is built from the wall without
10:07
exposing any meld to the table. The closed hand strategy is the
10:11
strategy of discretion. You are holding your cards
10:15
tight. You are giving the table no
10:17
information. You are accepting that your win,
10:21
if it comes, will come late, quietly, and without warning.
10:28
The closed hand teaches exactly the discipline Prim is
10:31
describing. You play the whole game as a
10:33
private document. You win if you win without
10:38
fanfare. You lose if you lose without
10:43
collapsing. The closed hand is a meditation
10:47
on patience, on privacy, and on the idea that the strength of a
10:52
player is not in what she shows, but in what she carries quietly.
10:58
Prim does not recommend the closed hand as a primary
11:01
strategy on every card. She does recommend that every
11:05
player spend a season training in closed hand discipline
11:08
because the discipline transfers the closed hand player even when
11:15
she is not playing. A closed hand plays every hand
11:18
better. Her discards are cleaner, her
11:21
reactions are smaller, her exposures, when she does use
11:25
them, land with more weight because she has held back so
11:29
long #4 what this week's discipline looks like in
11:36
practice. Prim is going to be direct about
11:39
what this section is really about, and she trusts you to
11:43
take it in the spirit it is offered.
11:46
The discipline of the hand that cannot close is the discipline
11:49
of doing your duty after your own reward is gone.
11:54
It is the player in round eight who plays the remainder of the
11:58
game with attention because the game deserves attention.
12:01
It is the soldier who finishes the mission after the personal
12:04
glory is impossible. It is the firefighter who goes
12:08
back into the building after she knows the building will not be
12:11
saved. The discipline of the lost hand
12:14
is a small weekly rehearsal for larger kinds of discipline that
12:19
other people in other contexts have practised at much greater
12:24
cost. Prim would not normally draw
12:27
this kind of line in these pages.
12:29
This week she will. The card we are holding this
12:34
year is a good card for learning this lesson.
12:36
Play the hand that cannot close. Play it well.
12:40
Remember why you can now. This publication receives
12:46
questions, many questions, and this week the question arrived
12:52
from several hosts, phrased almost identically.
12:56
This is the table is asking. I am hosting my Thursday game
13:01
this week, and it is the week before Memorial Day.
13:05
I want to acknowledge the day, but I do not want to make it
13:08
awkward or performative or political.
13:12
Is there a right way to do this, and what is the wrong way?
13:17
Prem has thought about this one carefully because it is the kind
13:21
of question where well meaning hosts can easily overshoot and
13:25
make something more awkward than if they had said nothing.
13:28
Let her give you her answer in three parts, because there is a
13:32
right way and there is a wrong way, and the difference matters
13:38
#1 the right way. The right way is small,
13:44
specific, and brief. Before play begins, as your
13:49
guests are settling and you are pouring the first round of
13:52
whatever you are serving, you say something like this.
13:56
Before we start, I just want to acknowledge that Monday is
14:00
Memorial Day and I am thinking this week about anyone at this
14:04
table whose family has served or whose people did not come home.
14:09
If you want to say anything about someone you are thinking
14:11
of, there is a moment here for that.
14:14
And if you just want to play, that is also entirely fine.
14:19
Then you stop. You do not extend it.
14:22
You do not turn it into a speech.
14:25
You let the table do what the table does.
14:29
Some guests will say a name out loud, some will not.
14:34
Both are correct. You have opened the door.
14:38
What each guest chooses to carry through it is hers #2 the wrong
14:44
way. The wrong way is anything that
14:48
turns the moment into theatre. Do not ask each guest to share a
14:53
story. Do not prepare a reading.
14:56
Do not play a video. Do not decorate the table in
14:59
red, white and blue unless you would normally decorate the
15:02
table in red, white and blue for a summer kick off, which is a
15:06
different kind of decoration with a different meaning.
15:10
The wrong way is always the version that makes the evening
15:13
about the host's performance of reverence rather than about the
15:16
guests own relationships with the day.
15:20
Memorial Day at a private game is a quiet acknowledgement, not
15:25
a programme #3 the middle way, which Prim has seen done
15:31
beautifully in several private games she has attended, is to
15:35
add one small gesture that is specific to your table, a place
15:40
setting at an empty seat. Not explained, Just present a
15:46
single candle on the sideboard lit before play, A bowl on the
15:50
table for any guest who wants to contribute to a veteran's
15:53
charity, with the name of the charity on a small card and no
15:57
one asking who contributed what. The gesture is specific.
16:02
It is easy to ignore if a guest is not in the mood for it, and
16:06
it is there for the guest who is.
16:10
The gesture does not interrupt the game.
16:12
The gesture sits alongside the game the way all the best table
16:17
rituals sit alongside all the best games.
16:21
Choose the gesture that matches your table.
16:23
Do not choose more than one. The other question Prim was
16:28
asked, which she will answer briefly here because it is
16:31
adjacent. What do I say if a guest at my
16:35
table shares something heavy and I do not know what to say back?
16:39
You say this. Thank you for sharing.
16:43
Then you sit in the silence for a moment.
16:46
Then you play the hand. That is all that is required.
16:51
The pressure to respond with the perfect thing is the thing that
16:54
keeps hosts from creating these moments in the 1st place.
16:58
You do not have to say the perfect thing.
17:00
You have to make room for the real thing.
17:03
The table will take it from there.
17:06
Prim will close this section with one last piece of advice,
17:09
because it matters. Some players at your table this
17:13
week will be carrying more than they are showing.
17:17
A woman whose child is currently deployed and who has been
17:20
carrying it privately. A woman whose parent is a
17:24
veteran with declining health and who has not told anyone yet.
17:28
A woman who lost a sibling decades ago and for whom the day
17:32
has never gotten easier. These women will be at your
17:36
table on Thursday. You will not know who they are.
17:40
Play gently this week. The game will do its work.
17:45
Sometimes the most important thing a table can do is provide
17:48
a few hours in which a player who is carrying something can
17:51
put it down, forget about it and focus on the rack in front of
17:55
her. Give your guests that kind of
17:58
table. That is the real
18:00
acknowledgement. Now.
18:03
This publication makes it a point to recognise those who
18:06
distinguish themselves in the community.
18:09
Not through volume. Heavens no.
18:12
Through substance. This is who's talking.
18:16
And this week we are talking about the women who served, the
18:20
women who wait, and the game that held them.
18:25
Military women have been playing this game for longer than most
18:27
people realise. Prim would like to spend this
18:31
section with the women in this community, whose relationship
18:34
with American Mahjong is inseparable from their
18:37
relationship with service. They are not a small group.
18:41
They are, by Prim's rough estimate, hundreds of thousands
18:46
of women across the country, and they include active duty service
18:49
women, veterans, military spouses, Gold Star mothers, and
18:55
the daughters and granddaughters of all of the above.
18:58
The game has been a quiet companion to American military
19:01
life for most of its American existence, and the stories you
19:05
hear when you start asking are remarkable.
19:09
Prim has been collecting a few of them.
19:11
This week. She would like to share. 3 #1
19:16
The Mahjong circle at the base. Prim heard from a reader, a
19:22
career Navy wife who asked to be identified only as Kay, who
19:27
described the mahjong circle she started at a base in Virginia in
19:31
the early 2000's. The circle met weekly in a room
19:36
the base Chapel made available. The players were a mix of wives,
19:40
a few active duty service women and one retired Army Colonel who
19:45
had learnt the game from her own mother in the 1970s and who Kay
19:51
said was a fearsome player. The circle was not advertised.
19:57
It did not have a name. It met for seven years.
20:01
Kay wrote that during deployments when her husband was
20:05
overseas. The Thursday Circle was the only
20:08
reliable structure in her week, and she can trace friendships
20:11
she still keeps to the women she met at that table.
20:15
The circle ended when the chaplain who had been
20:18
championing it retired and no one quite had the energy to
20:21
restart it. Kay would like the community to
20:24
know the circle existed and that it mattered, and that she is
20:29
still in touch with 11 of the regulars from those years and
20:32
that three of them have started Marsh on groups at new bases
20:36
where they or their husbands were later stationed.
20:40
The pattern replicates the game travels with the families.
20:44
Prim would like more of us to know this number 2 the VA
20:49
hospital rec room. Another reader, M, is a recently
20:56
retired occupational therapist who worked in VA hospital
20:59
settings for 32 years. She wrote to Prim to say that
21:04
American Ma Chong has been a quietly effective therapeutic
21:08
activity in several of the VA rehabilitation settings she
21:11
worked in, particularly with women veterans recovering from
21:15
injuries that affect fine motor control, attention, or cognitive
21:19
sequencing. The game requires exactly the
21:23
kind of sustained, multi dimensional attention that
21:26
rehabilitation protocols are often trying to rebuild, and the
21:30
social structure of the four player table produces motivation
21:34
that solo exercises cannot match.
21:37
M has run mahshong groups as part of her therapeutic work for
21:42
20 of her 32 years, and she wanted the community to know
21:46
that the game has done real work in places most mahshong players
21:50
will never see. She also noted that the wider
21:54
community sets, donations and instructional materials have
21:58
been a meaningful resource in these programs.
22:01
If you have a set you are no longer using and you are looking
22:05
for somewhere to send it, Prim will say on EMS behalf that your
22:10
local VA Hospitals recreation therapy department is worth a
22:14
call #3 the tournament champion who flew helicopters.
22:20
The third story Prim will tell briefly because the reader asked
22:26
a woman Prim we'll call Jay, who is now a retired Army Warrant
22:30
Officer and a current regular on the tournament circuit, learned
22:35
Mashong in 1998 from a friend at Fort Rucker in Alabama while she
22:40
was training to fly helicopters. She carried a travel set to 4
22:44
subsequent assignments, including one in Germany and one
22:48
in South Korea, and she started small tables wherever she went.
22:53
She has even placed in the top ten at Greenbrier.
22:57
She would like younger women in this community, military or
23:00
civilian, to know that the game is not incompatible with a
23:04
serious career and that the women who play this game include
23:09
women who have flown combat helicopters, commanded platoons,
23:13
served as military physicians, and raised children in service
23:17
or on their own while their spouses were overseas.
23:21
The game belongs to all of them. The community is richer for
23:25
every one of them. Jay was not sure anyone would
23:28
want to print her story. Prim is glad to honour the
23:33
players at your own table. The community this week is full
23:37
of women like KM and J, and you will not always know which of
23:43
your table mates fits this description.
23:46
What you can do is play gently, listen carefully, and carry the
23:51
awareness that the game is held up in part by women whose
23:56
relationship to the larger idea of service is more direct than
24:00
most of us will ever experience. If one of your regulars is a
24:04
veteran, thank her this week. If one of your regulars has lost
24:09
someone, sit with her. If one of your regulars is
24:12
actively deployed or has a spouse who is, ask her how she
24:16
is and mean it. The table is a place where these
24:21
things can be said without ceremony.
24:24
This week, more than most, the table should do its work.
24:29
And now a brief indulgence because this author believes
24:33
that one cannot play well if one does not play beautifully.
24:38
This is tile envy, where we Cove it openly and without apology.
24:45
Prim wants to walk a careful line in this section because
24:49
red, white and blue mashong sets are a real category and she does
24:54
not want to mock them or endorse them uncritically.
24:58
The honest truth is that some patriotic themed sets are lovely
25:02
and some are garish, and the difference is in the restraint
25:07
of the designer. Prim would like to point you
25:10
toward the restrained end of the spectrum this week, because a
25:13
Memorial Day table deserves a visual vocabulary that matches
25:18
the weight of the day, not the aesthetics of 1/4 of July
25:21
cookout. See, the mAh Shong line has
25:25
several colorways over the years that have leaned into Americana
25:29
without caricature. They're crisp white and true
25:33
blue palettes in particular carry the feeling of a classic
25:37
American aesthetic without the pageantry of full flag colours.
25:43
A table set with crisp white tiles, a white mat, and a simple
25:48
white linen runner feels appropriate for the week in a
25:51
way that a red, white and blue sequin set may not.
25:56
Prim would argue that the grown up version of patriotic table
25:59
design is about palette, not about flags.
26:03
For the tile set itself, Prim would point you toward the
26:07
vintage collectors market this week, not the new design market.
26:12
There are sets in private collections from the 1940s and
26:15
50s, often owned by families whose original buyer was a
26:19
military spouse or a post war bride, that carry the aesthetic
26:23
and material signature of that era.
26:26
If you have access to such a set, whether in your own family
26:31
or through a collector friend, bringing it out for Memorial Day
26:34
week is a more authentic gesture than buying anything new.
26:39
The set has seen this week before.
26:42
Let it see this week again. One last note on the accessory
26:48
side. Several brands in the community,
26:52
including some that Prim has featured in these pages, offer
26:55
modest percentages of sales on specific items to veterans
26:59
organisations throughout the year, not only during Memorial
27:03
Day week. If you are shopping this week,
27:07
do a little homework on where your dollars go.
27:10
The brands that are giving quietly year round are the ones
27:15
worth supporting far more than the brands that mount a
27:18
performative Memorial Day sale and then go silent until the
27:22
next holiday. Quiet generosity is the
27:25
aesthetic of this week. Let it extend to how you spend
27:30
as well as how you decorate. Now to matters of the calendar.
27:35
Where shall one be seen this season?
27:37
This is set your rack. The summer destinations are
27:43
confirming dates. Destination Mahjong's San Diego
27:47
Double Tournament is 2 weeks from this weekend and
27:50
registration is now firmly closed with a wait list in
27:54
place. The Shriners Mahjong Tournament
27:57
in Austin on June 20th still has open slots.
28:02
Destination Mahjong Atlantic City in mid August has about 60%
28:08
of its registrations filled, which is typical for this point
28:12
in the calendar. The full calendar is beginning
28:15
to solidify. Mashong World Championship in
28:19
Las Vegas is tracking for its usual October scale, with
28:23
registration running slightly ahead of last year at this
28:26
point, which Prim would note as a meaningful indicator of
28:30
overall community growth. Mahjong Fever Late Summer
28:35
Preview The next major Mahjong Fever event is a late summer
28:40
resort destination, and Prim has heard enough community buzz
28:44
about it to say that it is worth considering if you are still
28:47
deciding on a late summer event. The fever culture, which Prim
28:53
discussed in Letter 9, is the warmest on the national circuit,
28:58
and late summer registration tends to fill rapidly beyond the
29:03
schedule a Memorial Day thought. Prim will close this section
29:08
with a thought that is not on any calendar.
29:11
Several veterans organisations across the country run ongoing
29:15
game programs that welcome civilian volunteers, and
29:19
American mAh Shong has begun to show up in some of these
29:21
programs in recent years. If you are a player who has been
29:25
looking for a way to contribute that uses the skills and
29:29
community you already have, these programs are worth a
29:32
conversation. The game you know how to play
29:36
could be taught at your own pace in a setting where the
29:39
transmission would matter to the person receiving it.
29:43
This is not a call to action. Prim will make every issue.
29:47
She is making it this week because the week calls for it
29:52
this weekend. Memorial Day Monday, May 25th,
29:58
wait list destination. Mahjong San Diego double
30:03
tournament June 5th through 7th open.
30:07
Shriners Mahjong Tournament Austin, TX June 20th Open
30:14
destination Mahjong Atlantic City August 16th through 18th
30:21
open Mahjong Fever late summer destination event open Mahjong
30:27
World Championship Paris Las Vegas October 16th through 18th
30:33
Check your local Memorial Day weekend community sessions.
30:36
You may find a fun game in your area.
30:39
Full event calendar at the order of the tile.com/events.
30:45
And finally, because this author believes every player deserves
30:49
at least one piece of knowledge that makes her the most
30:51
interesting person at the table, we close with crack
30:54
intelligence. Prim would like to offer this
30:57
section not as a history of the game during wartime, which is
31:01
too large a topic for a single section, but as a history of the
31:05
circles of women who kept the game alive through the most
31:09
difficult American decades of the last century.
31:12
The story is specific, regionally varied and largely
31:17
undocumented in any academic sense.
31:20
What follows is what Prim has pieced together from
31:22
conversations with older players, reading in the
31:25
Catskills, oral histories and her own family's stories.
31:30
The bibliography is thin. The practice was real.
31:35
In the 1940s, as the American economy mobilized for the Second
31:40
World War and millions of American men went overseas, the
31:44
women who remained at home formed countless informal
31:47
mashong circles that functioned as much as grief and waiting
31:51
structures as they did as game groups.
31:54
The circle Prim's dear friend described in a small town in
31:59
Ohio, met every Wednesday afternoon in one of four
32:02
rotating kitchens. The players were all Military
32:06
Wives. The game was the reason to
32:08
gather. The gathering was the reason to
32:11
endure the week. When telegrams arrived, the
32:15
circle was often the 1st place the news was told.
32:19
When the men came home, the circle continued because the
32:24
women had become each other's primary friends by the end of
32:27
the war in a way that even marriages did not always match.
32:31
Some of those circles ran for 40 years.
32:34
Some of them are still running in modified form through the
32:37
daughters of the original players.
32:40
The Jewish American women's circles of the 1940s and 50s,
32:44
which Prim has referenced in earlier issues, were a central
32:48
variant of this pattern. The Catskills connection Prim
32:54
covered in letter 4 is part of this story.
32:57
The resort communities and the urban neighborhoods that fed
33:01
them were built around intergenerational women's
33:04
gatherings, where the game was the anchor.
33:07
The National Mahshong League's founding in 1937 had
33:11
standardised the game enough that these circles could
33:14
function across geographies. A woman who learnt in Brooklyn
33:18
could join a circle in the Catskills, could visit a cousin
33:22
in Cleveland and sit down at a table that played recognisable
33:26
hands. The standardisation was its own
33:29
kind of infrastructure, and during the war years that
33:33
infrastructure held. the VA hospital story is different and
33:39
less discussed. After the Second World War and
33:44
again after Korea and Vietnam, American mahjong showed up in VA
33:48
rehabilitation settings in ways that are almost entirely
33:52
unrecorded. But M, the occupational
33:56
therapist who wrote to Prim this week, confirmed from her own
34:00
career the game's combination of fine motor practice, cognitive
34:05
sequencing, social interaction and gentle competitive structure
34:09
made it a useful tool in rehabilitation contexts,
34:13
particularly for women veterans returning with injuries that
34:16
affected attention and sequential processing.
34:20
The formal documentation of this practice is nearly non existent
34:24
because the therapists who used the game were generally running
34:28
informal groups rather than publishing academic results.
34:32
But the practice existed. The game did the work.
34:37
The women it helped now have great great grandchildren
34:40
carrying on their legacy, and the stories they told mostly
34:44
disappeared with them. The thing Prim would like you to
34:49
carry from this section is the simple recognition that the game
34:52
you are playing has been load bearing for a very long time.
34:57
It has held women together during wars.
35:00
It has rebuilt attention in VA hospital rec rooms.
35:04
It has kept widowed spouses in community for decades after
35:07
their circles original purpose had changed.
35:11
This is not a story about mahjong as a metaphor for
35:14
anything. This is a story about mahjong as
35:17
itself, a set of tiles, a card, a wall, and four women doing the
35:23
work that community always does when it is done well.
35:28
At this table, we remember. We remember the women who built
35:33
this community in circumstances we will never fully understand.
35:37
We remember the soldiers their tables waited for.
35:41
We remember that the game we play on a Thursday afternoon was
35:44
once the thing that made a Thursday afternoon bearable for
35:47
a woman whose husband was somewhere she could not reach.
35:51
Play this week with that awareness.
35:54
The wall is built from more than tiles.
35:57
Remember a memorial weekend note for the families, the veterans
36:04
and the mothers who waited. If you are a veteran reading
36:08
this, Prim thanks you. If you are the mother, spouse,
36:14
sibling or child of someone who served, Prim thanks you.
36:19
If you are a Gold Star family member, Prim honours you.
36:24
If you are none of the above, and you are planning to sit down
36:27
at a Mashong table this weekend with people whose lives have
36:30
been touched by service in ways you may not know about, play
36:34
gently. Ask less than you usually ask.
36:38
Listen more than you usually listen.
36:41
Let the table do its work. If you are moved to give this
36:46
weekend, Prim would gently suggest the Tragedy Assistance
36:49
Program for survivors, known as TAPS, which supports military
36:55
families grieving a loss, and the USO, which has supported
37:00
military personnel and their families for more than 8
37:03
decades. And finally, Mission 22, which
37:08
works to prevent veteran suicide and to support the families it
37:11
touches. All three are widely respected.
37:15
All three would welcome your contribution.
37:18
The amount does not matter, the gesture does.
37:22
Subscribe at the Order of the tile.com if you have not yet
37:28
forward this issue to the women in your life who should be
37:30
reading it, especially the ones who have served or who have
37:35
loved someone who served. Everyone deserves a seat at this
37:38
table, and this week more than most, the table is for them.
37:45
Until next week, may your rack be blessed, your Charleston
37:49
ruthless, and your remembrance clear eyed.
37:53
This has been the Order of the Tile issue #10 at this table we
37:58
remember. Do forward this to your favorite
38:01
4th. Everyone deserves a seat at this
38:04
table, and everyone deserves to be properly informed before they
38:08
take it. Until next Thursday, dear
38:11
listener. Prim as always.