Sometimes a winning hand is a losing proposition.

My Mom's maternal Grandmother, Zigmunta, was Polish. When she was about sixteen years old, her father challenged a young buck visiting from Lithuania to a card game. Her father, his confidence likely fueled by vodka, declared that if the Lithuanian won the game, then he would surrender his daughter's hand in marriage to the foreigner.

Later that night, Zigmunta learned that she would be the wife of Silvestras. She packed her dolls and moved to Lithuania. And so began a lifetime of bitterness and disappointment.

Mariampolis, Lithuania, 1905. Zigmunta sat for this formal portrait perhaps six or seven years into her marriage with Silvestras. My Mom recalls that Zigmunta, her maternal Grandmother, always called my Mom "Paršiva Litewka." That's a combination of (rather coarse) Lithuanian and Polish that means "nasty Lithuanian girl."