The Move I Didn’t Take
Every Saturday evening, not long after dinner, the chessboard found its way back onto the dining table.
The pieces were never packed away very carefully. A few white pawns often remained scattered beside the board from the previous weekend, and one of the knights almost always seemed to end up facing the wrong direction before either of them noticed. By the time the dishes had been washed and the table wiped clean, the familiar ritual had already begun. Somewhere behind them, the television played softly from the living room while his wife moved in and out of the kitchen, occasionally glancing over to see how the game was unfolding.
His son always chose the black pieces, yet somehow still insisted on making the first move.
At seven years old, he had become fascinated by the game. He knew how every piece moved, announced every check with quiet excitement, and had already begun thinking several moves ahead instead of simply reacting to whatever was directly in front of him.
For nearly two months they had played this way every weekend. Some evenings they managed four or five games before bedtime. Other evenings only one or two before his son grew restless and wandered off in search of his iPad, leaving the pieces exactly where they had fallen until the following Saturday.
His father wanted those Saturday evenings to remain something his son looked forward to. If his son lost once or twice, he usually found a way to make sure the night still ended with a victory. It seemed like such a small thing to do.
The games themselves were often surprisingly even. Some weekends the score finished six games to five. Others ended eight to seven. Sometimes his father won by a single game. Sometimes his son did.
One evening, after the pieces had been packed away, his son disappeared into his room before returning with a small notebook.
“We should keep score.”
His father smiled.
“Alright.”
“We should keep score.”
From then on, every game was carefully recorded before the chessboard was put away. The notebook slowly became another part of their Saturday evenings. Neither of them paid much attention to the numbers at first. They simply wrote them down, closed the notebook, and returned to the board again the following weekend.
There were also evenings that reminded his father just how quickly his son was learning.
One game had barely begun. Only four or five moves had been played when his son quietly moved his bishop before looking up with a grin.
“Checkmate.”
His father laughed immediately.
“No, it isn’t.”
Without saying anything, the boy leaned forward and pointed at the board.
His father followed the line of moves once.
Then again.
Only then did he realise his son had seen something several moves earlier that he himself had completely overlooked.
He looked back across the table and laughed.
“You saw that?”
His son nodded, unable to hide the smile spreading across his face.
The two of them laughed so loudly that his wife walked in from the kitchen to see what had happened.
Looking across the board, his father could not have been prouder—not because he had lost, but because, for the first time, his son had beaten him so completely that there was nothing to question.
That victory belonged entirely to him.
Over the weeks that followed, the notebook continued filling as the scores slowly drifted further apart.
Fifteen to ten.
Eighteen to ten.
Twenty to ten.
His son smiled every time another number appeared beside his own name.
His father smiled too.
Only much later did he begin noticing something else.
It wasn’t that his son had become impossible to beat.
It was that he could no longer remember the last game he had honestly tried to win.
Whenever the game drifted away from his son, another game quietly followed. If a move ended badly, it was taken back. If the position no longer looked promising, the board was reset before disappointment had time to settle between them. Somewhere, without either of them intending it, every Saturday evening had slowly begun revolving around the same thing.
His son’s happiness.
One Saturday, halfway through another game, his son lost his queen.
The boy reached instinctively towards the piece.
“I wasn’t meant to do that.”
For a brief moment, his father almost nodded, just as he had so many times before.
Instead, he gently rested his hand on the chess piece.
“No,” he said quietly.
“Let’s leave it there.”
The room grew still.
His son looked back at the board. Without his queen, every move demanded a little more thought than before, and for several minutes neither of them spoke as he searched quietly for another way forward.
The game ended.
“I lost.”
“You did.”
There was disappointment in his son’s voice, but no argument.
As they packed the pieces away, the notebook was opened once more.
His son hesitated briefly before writing another score beneath the others.
20–11.
He closed the notebook and placed it beside the chessboard.
His father reached for the box, expecting the evening to end there.
Instead, his son quietly began arranging the pieces for another game.
Halfway through setting up the board, one of the bishops found its way onto the wrong square. His hand reached towards it almost automatically before stopping. He looked at the board for a moment, gently returned the bishop to where it belonged, and only then looked up.
"20–11"
“Again?”
His father smiled.
“Again.”
As the next game unfolded, neither of them spoke very much. There were no requests to take back a move, no quiet negotiations whenever the position became difficult, and no suggestion that they should begin again simply because the board no longer looked the way his son had hoped. He simply sat a little longer with each position before making his move, while across the table his father found himself looking only for his next move.
The notebook remained closed beside the chessboard.
Neither of them looked at the score again that evening.
Made In His Image
You are made perfectly. Loved deeply. Never beyond hope.
Visit the Made In His Image project at: madeinhisimage.life
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