Nancy Drew

Now, you can laugh all you want, but this is a guilty pleasure. And, unlike most guilty pleasures that, by their very definition, are secretive and/or private, this one has brought more than many great memories with the ones I love.

I discovered them by chance at the library one day, and have been solving the mysteries for years since. Each time a new one comes out, Grace, Elijah, and I rush to the library to pick it up and play it together until it's solved. We exercise our brains and work as a team, with each player knowing which puzzles we can conquer and which requires us to yield to another. I'm good at words, Grace is good at memory, and Elijah's good at anything requiring him to think the big picture.

We've played, just the three of us. We've played with Nana over popcorn and soda. And we've played with "Auntie Cole" so many nights when she lived here: remember, Nic, the blizzard passed with cocoa and Drew? Now it's a memory we share for years to come...maybe as long as they keep making the Drews because, as sure as there is family and there are friends, the medium of joy and memory doesn't matter.

It only matters that you make them...and maybe that you catch the bad guy now and again.