First, there was a mysterious blue box containing odd Chinese painted tiles. So smooth and cool, such lovely designs. They called my name. I had no clue how to use them or what they would mean to my life. A few months later some friends and I tried to figure out from an internet download how to play Chinese Mah Jongg, but it was so involved, so complex and decoding it along with a bottle of cabernet sauvignon did not work well. The blue box went back up on the shelf and several yard sales later, it was still there. For years, I could not bring myself to sell it, did not know how much to sell it for, and no one I knew seemed to have a clue. Rural Carroll County had little use for such an obscure Asian item; the five Asian restaurants all had the same menu and what few Chinese Americans lived there were not mixing in with us Westerners. Fifteen years later, we retired and moved to Lower, Slower Delaware where … Low and Behold, the community we moved to had a Mah Jongg group!

I walked in one Tuesday and stood in front of their two tables with all seats taken and asked if someone would teach me to play. Eight pairs of salt and pepper eyebrows wiggled at me in disbelief. You can watch, I was told. Come back next week, another player suggested, never taking her eyes off a trifold card in front of her rack of tiles. Maybe someone will be absent, and you can sit in. No newbies at my table, warned another experienced hand.

After I had shown up for three weeks, asking questions and having read several online sources, one of them finally said, let me explain it to you. She rapidly named the tiles and how they were used in the game, the process of the game, and about thirty minutes later I was seated at someone’s elbow as she explained what she was doing, when and why. The next week I was playing, badly. The next month, I was addicted. In three months, I had found this wonderful teacher, Michele Frizzell on YouTube. My life had changed.

Now, a year later, I have taken the American Mahi Jongg Teacher’s Association course and am studying to take the certification exam. I have taught three classes in our community and grown the Mah Jongg group from one meeting a week for a group of tightly knit six, to two meetings a week and up to as many as twenty-one people playing. I also coordinate the Mah Jongg weekly group at a local senior center, where I’m also teaching and coaching for an ever changing set of players, from beginners to tournament level.

Mah Jongg has become my passion. I think I enjoy teaching even more than playing. It is so gratifying to watch people move from confused and terrified to beginning glimpses of understanding, then moving confidently through the Charleston. Best of all is the joy and excitement of a new player’s first Mah Jongg.