My new nov­el, In the Fam­i­ly Way, is set in the mid-1960s, before the women’s move­ment took flight and most cer­tain­ly before Roe v. Wade became the law of the land. At its core my book is about the close friend­ship between a group of sub­ur­ban house­wives and how much they have to rely on each oth­er to nav­i­gate life’s chal­lenges, includ­ing mar­i­tal issues, soci­etal restric­tions on women, and preg­nan­cies — both want­ed and unwanted. 

In order to real­ly explore the women’s rela­tion­ships, as well as what times were like back then, I knew I need­ed to get them all togeth­er on a reg­u­lar basis. After con­sid­er­ing my options, I decid­ed on a week­ly canas­ta game. I knew bridge was pop­u­lar back then, but I know noth­ing about bridge oth­er than it’s hard and it intim­i­dat­ed me. There was mahjong, but that struck me as some­thing pri­mar­i­ly Jew­ish and Asian women played and since two of the house­wives in my nov­el are Jew­ish and two are not, canas­ta struck me as a bet­ter choice. 

I did a lit­tle dig­ging into the game online and learned that canas­ta was invent­ed in 1930 by two men in Uruguay. But what I espe­cial­ly liked about the card game is how it’s mak­ing such a come­back. Today, there are tem­ple sis­ter­hoods and JCCs all over the coun­try offer­ing lessons and week­ly drop-in games. Though once con­sid­ered an ​“old” person’s card game by some, it is now gain­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty with women of all ages who are learn­ing it and lov­ing it. 

A lit­tle more than a dozen years ago — with our adult chil­dren out of the house — my hus­band and I decid­ed we’d had it with the snow and ice and decid­ed to relo­cate. Even before Covid hit, we were both work­ing remote­ly, so we left New York and head­ed south. 

We’d bare­ly unpacked when a woman who lived in our new devel­op­ment approached me. She did not come with a tray of fresh­ly baked cook­ies as she might have in the 1960s (and as hap­pens in my nov­el), but she came with a smile and a warm wel­come. Weeks lat­er she asked, ​“Do you play canas­ta?” Alas, I told her, I did not. But with­in a cou­ple months, I, along with three oth­er new­bies she’d assem­bled, were hang­ing on her every word as she explained the impor­tance of remem­ber­ing to take our talon after meld­ing and ​“sig­nal­ing” to our partners.

These days I have a week­ly canas­ta game. There are rough­ly twen­ty of us who show up every Tues­day. On Sun­day our fear­less leader, Lin­da, sends out a text mes­sage to every­one ask­ing who is free to play and who wants to come to lunch an hour before game time. Our group is very egal­i­tar­i­an; none of the ​“I pre­fer not to play with her,” or ​“I played with her last week.” Instead, we all pick a card and the four who draw aces sit at one table, twos at anoth­er, and so on. In the sum­mer, when the snow­birds fly north, we may not have three or four tables of women, but some­how, we always man­age to field at least one game. 

As cards are drawn and dis­card­ed, small talk is exchanged. Occa­sion­al­ly con­ver­sa­tion grows more seri­ous and we sit, shuf­fling cards more times than nec­es­sary, while lis­ten­ing to one another’s prob­lems, suc­cess­es, or sto­ries about fam­i­ly who are vis­it­ing or those who have just left. This is also when arrange­ments to bor­row high chairs, toys, and pack ​‘n plays take place. In short, our canas­ta table becomes a com­bi­na­tion of town-square talk and an old-fash­ioned tele­phone party-line.

There has been ill­ness and dis­ease in our group. Some have also suf­fered the loss of part­ners and hus­bands. Those who need sup­port know they can find it in the mem­bers of their Tues­day game. And we, just like the mil­len­ni­um of women who’ve come before us, lend help and sup­port to our sis­ters around the table.