My parents and their friends gently ribbed us, amused that we played such an old-fashioned game.īut I sensed a wistfulness underneath, and later one of them confided they wished they played cards with their partner. One evening when family friends invited us over to grill, Michael and I decided to play a quick game of cribbage on the deck. I didn't realize what cribbage had become until we changed environments, going to live with my parents for several weeks that summer. The rest of the week might be filled with anxiety, but Friday cribbage was our time to be playful, to flirt, to recapture the feeling of our early dating days and set the many small tensions of daily life aside. In search of distraction, we headed to our small cement patio and decided to try a game Michael had learned in college: cribbage. Bleary from too much screen time and anxious about the escalating pandemic, all I wanted was to relax into our usual Friday happy hour routine.īut it was suddenly clear that our relationship had entered new territory, one where playful spontaneity would be harder to come by.

Then in March of 2020 we were both sent home from work, and suddenly our lives were confined to 640 square feet.Īfter the first full week of working from home, we emerged stiffly from our makeshift desks.

We expected living together to be a change, but not a huge one we'd make coffee together in the mornings and maybe see each other for dinner, but otherwise maintain our busy schedules. Our first year of dating was typical of early-thirty-somethings, a happy whirlwind of weekend day trips and long, tipsy evenings at our favorite bars. When my partner Michael and I moved in together in February 2020, we hadn't had time for many games, cards or otherwise.

Sara Barbour is the Senior Production Manager for NPM Creative.

How to play cribbage alone