351. Why I Played Chess

If you know anything about chess, you can see from the photos above that I'm not good. Given my skill level (or lack thereof), you might not guess that I've been playing chess daily with my father for years. My father esteemed chess. When he expressed this sentiment to me, more than five years ago, I said that I knew the rules but didn't have any particular feelings about the game. I told him that if he didn't mind not being challenged, I would play him at the rate of one move per day. Until this week, when he was admitted to the hospital for the last time, we missed only five days in more than five years.

For him, chess was a game of strategy and skill. For me, playing chess with my father was a way to say "hello" and "I love you" every day. Among all of our games, I won, by luck alone, exactly four times. That is to say, games against me didn't cause my dad to use much strategy or skill, but he never stopped playing me and never gave up hope that maybe I'd improve. Obviously, I didn't.

I'm going to share three facts about my dad. I could (obviously) share more, but these three will give you a sense of his affability, his humor, and his work ethic.

My father saw every restaurant he ate at (and that was a lot because he and my bonus mom grew tired of cooking) as an opportunity to become best friends with the wait staff, especially if that meant he could practice Spanish. I often think you can tell a lot about people by how they treat those who are serving them. Well, my dad wasn't just polite, he was actively friendly. If a waiter said, "Hi, I'm Mike," my dad would reply, "Hi, Mike, I'm Richard." He would joke and chat with servers and bus people and hosts. Every meal offered at least one new bestie.

My dad was big on shenanigans. He told me great stories about when he was a kid and worked scams with his pals at Forest Hills Stadium. He and his friends got jobs selling programs. They'd then go around and find the used programs and resell the same ones for personal profit. They worked some other minor frauds during their employment, always cheating "the man" out of profit, but never harming any of the patrons of the events.

Part of why we don't have tons more doctors in the world is that the education and training demand a very sharp mind and an ability to function on not enough sleep. Crossing the finish line means at least eight years (but more like twelve) of grueling work. After graduating with honors from medical school at NYU, my father decided to become a gastrointestinal radiologist. He became expert enough in this specialty to serve on the examining board for hopeful new doctors, but the field itself became less relevant as ultrasound technology improved. Instead of staying the course or finding an easy pivot, my father completed an entire second residency in psychiatry, which was a newer interest of his. He learned enough about psychiatry to be awarded Distinguished Life Fellow and also become a board examiner in that field.

If you're still reading and want to learn more about my father, here's an obituary my family and I wrote for his (and my) college newsletter. (Depending on when you read this post, the obituary might still be in draft form.)

As I can no longer play my daily game with my dad, I have retired from playing chess, but I am so glad I had that way to check in with my father every day for the final years of his life. My old-lady hockey teammates and I say, "It's not about the hockey." For me, it was never about the chess.