It's How We Play That Matters

We play the hand we’re dealt, for better or worse, to our benefit or detriment--and to others’ as well. Our lives reverberate out. Even after we’re gone, the way we played our hand continues its influence in the world until eventually it peters out. Depending on how you played and the size of the arena, this influence can extend a long time, centuries even, but for most of us it’s less. This thought followed me through a curious look at the immigrant story in my family line, and how the lives of two people continue to influence those of us alive today.

I was leafing through a genealogy report drawn up by some cousins many years back. It centers around my grandfather’s lineage, namely his parents who emigrated from present day Slovenia to the U.S. From that research our family learned that our ancestors had been considered ‘the poorest of the poor’ in their Slovenian village. Despite their lack of resources, but also because of it, a group of four brothers (one of them my great grandfather) decided to take a chance on the options available in the US coal mines at that time.

If life can be likened to a hand of cards, then the world around us is the rest of the deck sitting on the table waiting for us to draw its next card. This isn’t to say that life is only a game of chance, but it’s partially so, and the way we choose to navigate it becomes our history.

I grew up in a family of Bridge and Rummy fans, of Hearts, Canasta and Double Solitaire. You name it, we’ve played it. One of our favorite card games eventually became Up and Down the River, a game of expanding and then shrinking hands, and around which we created many holiday card tournaments. A game of cards asks you to make decisions based on the best available information at the time which also is incomplete. You don’t know what the other folks are holding in their hands, nor what the remaining deck holds in front of you. You must play your card with a little courage, a bit of hope, then afterwards assess, and possibly re-direct. Then repeat.

While cards, and games in general, are for entertainment, they’re also for practice: the practice of strategic thinking required of us throughout life. In life you can prepare your strategies well, but ultimately you must choose without knowing the future, and most of us don’t love this. I certainly don’t.

And yet, regardless of the outcome of our decisions, there are always gifts that come which we hadn’t imagined ahead of time. One of the biggest tricks in life, it seems to me, is recognizing those gifts. It’s also a great strategy for a well-lived life.

My great grandparents, Joseph and Anna Kameen, were Slovenian natives who journeyed to the U.S. to reach for something better with no guarantees. They ended up creating a positive family culture that spanned generations—a very long-running gift to those of us down the line.

Joseph came to America in 1901 on The Queen Louise, a German ocean liner which set sail from Bremen, Germany. His future wife, Anna, set sail the following year from France. Joseph had $16 in his pocket when he arrived at Ellis Island. Anna had $5—the equivalent of about $160 today.

At the turn of the twentieth century, that region of Central Europe was spare in opportunity, so Joseph and his brothers made the leap to try their luck in America, betting on work ethic and a little providence. It’s a classic story for that time in Slovenian history, but not everyone took the chance and played that card. One in six Slovenes left the country back then to try their luck elsewhere.

Card #1: The Queen Louise

Twenty-eight days after Anna’s arrival in NYC in 1902, my great grandparents had met and were married. This would have been to situate themselves the best they could for a life far from their families. The first of their eight children was born the following year, with my grandfather coming in as the grand finale thirteen years later. (I can just hear him chuckle at that designation.) Building their family was a well-played card. It brought more responsibility, but it created a group of people who eventually went out into the world and made it a better place by orders of magnitude. My grandfather and his siblings were quite a special bunch.

Card #2: Family

My great grandparents raised their children like many immigrant folks throughout history, with a hard work ethic and family-centric values. All nine members contributed to the family’s survival, with the oldest son, Joe, working as a family breadwinner from the time of his early teens. The rest of the kids took odd jobs that partially contributed to the family’s college fund for some of its members. It’s incredible to me to think of someone from the ‘poorest of the poor’ taking the initiative to move to another continent with little resources and then direct the family he created to work hard to send some of its members to college.

I think about the determination it must take to be that person and live that life, and I think about the trust there must be in the possibility of a better life. I don’t see how you can do what my great grandparents did and not have that kind of inner strength and trust, and there have been countless others like them. It’s sort of the human story. Even though venturing far with no assurances is quite a big undertaking, all of us have our own version of traveling into the unknown with courage.

Back then, life was simpler and more DIY. A cohesion was built in my grandfather’s family from the day-to-day. Constant household chores were tended by everyone. Gardens were watched and worked. Jobs for money to survive was the norm. Kids collected bits of coal that fell from the trains running through town, then sold it door to door. There were baseball games for fun, and horse and buggy rides to a farm outside of town. It wasn’t all work. In the genealogy report there’s mention of the card game Euchre, which Wikipedia mentions as the ‘national card game of the U.S. in the late 19th century’. So, it seems my family has been playing cards for quite some time. I think it was the close collaboration and support within Joseph and Anna’s family that perhaps was the greatest asset handed to the generations that followed.

Card #3: A rich, dedicated family life

Anna and Joseph came from villages which were about ten miles apart in a region of Slovenia that closely resembled the northeastern Pennsylvania countryside half a world away. Many immigrants from that region of Europe settled in those PA hills and went promptly into jobs in the bellies of coal mines, including Joseph. By the early 1900s, the U.S. was the largest coal producer in the world, pulling immigrant labor across the Atlantic in droves. When Joseph arrived in the U.S. in 1901, the coal industry happened to be dealing with labor strikes that ultimately increased the financial outlook of the miners, as agreements were made to raise wages. It’s possible this helped my great grandparents, too. However, the industry began to mechanize its labor, developing drilling machines that increased productivity. This was a boon to my great grandfather because he was one of the lucky ones to be retained and then promoted to manning one of these machines.

Card #4: New opportunities taken

But Joseph, like anyone, couldn’t predict or completely control the way his hand was going to play out. Eventually it came to be understood that the dust generated by the innovations in the industry (the drilling machines) collected in the miners’ lungs, creating black lung disease, or pneumoconiosis, to which my great grandfather likely succumbed after a prolonged illness. He was too young, but this was the card he drew at the end of his game. The family went on without him, and thrived beyond expectation, in no small measure due to the way my great grandfather chose to live the life he was given.

Card #5: Too soon

Sometimes the game of life doesn’t go how we planned or hoped it would. We place bets, draw cards, make bids, calculate the future. And this is best, but at the same time it doesn’t shield us from the inevitable challenges that will come. But still, my grandfather spoke of his life with great affection. He adored his parents and siblings, and they him. They were loving and kind people. I wish my great grandparents could hear me tell them how indebted I am to them for creating the family from which I originated. I’m very proud to be a member of their family line.

My grandfather and his seven siblings became a doctor, a business executive, three business owners, a nurse, and a priest. This tells you nothing of who they were, though, which was honest, generous, wise, and gracious. They showed integrity sprinkled with humor. The hands Joseph and Anna were dealt were played with courage and a fixed commitment, and their influence won’t peter out anytime soon. They made something sturdy and beautiful, and it gained traction and influence for generations.

When my large extended family played cards together at my grandparents’ house years ago it was quite the scene: yells of agony over losing a card trick, or screams of delight over winning one, the pseudo trash talking. More than anything, it was a scene of storytelling, sharing, and laughter.

One holiday we played Up and Down the River and the tournament promoters announced a new prize to be awarded: The Toilet Bowl Prize. Uncle Larry ended up winning it because his score was, as they say, in the toilet bowl. I think he won a roll of TP, which was more than I got for scoring further up the line! The person with the lowest score, whose play was the sorriest of all, was a winner too. Deep within the joke of that prize was a recognition that the time we spent together as a family was the win.

My great grandmother, Anna, passed away in 1970, when she was 92 and I was 5. I remember her toothy smile and squinty eyes, her white hair, and the hunched posture she held in the chair she always occupied. She’d look at me and smile, wave her hand through the air at me as if she was wiping away our conversation to get on with the next task. By that time, she was senile and not quite available, though I had no idea about those things.

Anna’s children are gone now, too. One of the legacies they left us was the lesson on how to recognize the gifts inherent in any situation, the tough times included. Those eight siblings were walking gratitude. I heard appreciation for their lives out of their mouths at every family gathering. It was how they paid respect for this life. Their example has been placed on the mantel of our family’s history, displayed for all to see, as an heirloom mindset. It is an extraordinary gift to have received. And, you guessed it, one for which I’m so grateful.

[My thanks goes to Mary Kameen McElhinney and John Kameen for the history they documented for the rest of us.]