Although it started with her, my grandmother is way too nice for a game with so much sabotage. My two uncles in New York City are notorious for sandbagging (saving all your good cards until the end). My cousins are crawling up the ranks. Then there’s me and my immediate family, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. 

As a kid, I was almost irritated by canasta, but after every game I’d want to keep going. Now, I’m always superexcited to play. When I’m home, I play at least once a week with my parents and grandmother. On big family vacations, there are at least three sessions every night. It’s a very long game, and we all eat pretzel nuts while we’re playing, which my goofy uncles—who also drink a lot of wine while they play—call “nutzels.” Once, we were playing at my uncle’s place on Fire Island (off Long Island) and both my uncles were way behind, but they had the most insane comeback ever. They still call that game “The Miracle of Fire Island.”

I’m bad at strategizing and thinking ahead the way my uncles do, but when I win, I win big. Once, I was playing with my grandmother against my parents and we beat them in two rounds, which was crazy. So I have that for my pride. But it’s really about the love of being with my family and the laughs we get out of the game.