There is a table in my mother's dining room that has been set up for mah jongg for thirty years. The felt is worn in two places where the racks always sit.
My mother taught me at that table, badly and patiently, when I was about twelve. I taught my daughter there about fifteen years ago, using the same racks. And now my daughter teaches my mother, which is a thing I did not see coming and enjoy more than I can say.
What strikes me is how little the game itself matters to any of it. I could not tell you who won last Thursday. I can tell you that my daughter is applying to graduate school, that my mother has opinions about it, and that both of those things came out during the Charleston rather than over any meal.
That is the part outsiders never understand. They see people concentrating on tiles and assume the tiles are the point. The tiles are the reason to sit down and stay for three hours. The conversation is the point.