The day my grandfather hung himself, my father invented a card game. My grandfather had not been a good father, it had been hard times when my father was born, times of war and poverty, and love was not on the plates at lunchtime. They hadn’t spoken to each other for a long time.

My father wasn’t a good father either. He learned the harshness of my grandfather and did not learn love. He confused respect with fear and taught me to fear him. But that afternoon he taught me a card game.

I was perhaps about ten years old, and I remember my father was sitting on the living room couch, alone, moving the cards from a deck in his hand over and over again. It was a childish game, maybe one of those where you have to form families, I don’t remember well. I remember, though, that my mother had told me that Grandpa had died. I didn’t know my grandfather, we lived in another city, far from him. My mother took me to the door of the living room and told me: “Give your father a kiss”.

I stood at the door. I was afraid to go near him. He seemed completely immersed in his thoughts, as he moved the cards in the deck over and over, and on his face there was an expression I had never seen before. Something sweet, perhaps a sense of sadness.

Suddenly he looked up and saw me. Come, he said. I went over and sat down next to him. I didn’t know what to do. I invented a card game, he said. Look. He started to sort the cards on the low table and explain the new rules to me. It was magic. I learned at that moment, although I realized much later, that a game could be many things. And something even more important: that one can always change the rules of the game, if the players agree.

Many years have passed since then. So many, that I no longer remembered it. My father died a few years ago. We hadn’t spoken for a long time. A few months ago I found myself in a very difficult moment of life. I contracted a neurological disease, lost my job, and found myself in a distant country, with a different language, forced to start over at an age and in health conditions where it was very difficult to find work. Luckily, I had a wonderful companion by my side. A woman who believed in me (in us) and who has been my support in these difficult times. We had to do something to get by. And we decided to create a card game.

None of this would have been possible without her, without Maria, who gave masterly form to the ideas that arose among us. For months we worked, we tried, we made mistakes, we learned. We have developed a project together that goes beyond a card game. It is a game that is born from work and love, from the passion that we have both put into it.

And now, when the time comes to launch it, the world goes crazy. Again. As it always has. And we wonder what to do. If it makes sense to launch a project when everything seems to be falling apart around. And we answer yes. When we started making this game, everything seemed to fall apart around us. And creating our game gave meaning to our life, made us have a future to fight for. We’ve come this far and we’re not going to stop now. Because we believe the future exists, but we have to create it ourselves. Together.

They say Picasso said, “It took me a lifetime to paint like a child.” I never learned to paint. I think that, like everyone else, I’m still learning to live, although there are fewer and fewer pages left in the rule book. It took me a lifetime to learn to play like a child and to remember that my father taught me that if life gives you bad cards, you can always change the rules.



I’m going to press the button. We’re going to launch the campaign. Right now we all need a miracle. But I’m convinced that miracles are performed by mankind on earth. We can do it, we will do it. Let’s go.

P.S.: The image that illustrates this article is part of the game we have created. It’s called Hangry Dogs and it’s already on Kickstarter. Let’s make miracles!