I was nine, and I had been allowed to sit at the table for weeks without playing — I just arranged the tiles for my grandmother and fetched her tea.
The night she let me play properly, I won. I remember the feeling vividly and completely incorrectly: I thought I had worked it out.
It took me years to understand what actually happened. She had been watching my rack the entire hand, and she had been discarding into it with the precision of someone who had played for fifty years and could put a nine-year-old's hand together from the other side of the table. When I called mah jongg, she had handed it to me.
Here is the thing, though. She never let me know. Not that night, not for years. She let me have the win completely, and in doing so she gave me the only thing that would have kept me at the table: the belief that I could do it.
Two years ago I watched her do exactly the same thing to my niece. Same table, same racks, same expression of mild surprise when the child pushed her tiles forward.
I am fairly sure she let me win. I am completely sure it worked.