Every so often, my husband buys a lottery ticket at the gas station. He drops it on the kitchen counter without a word. We've stopped pretending. We no longer say, "When we win the lottery…" because we have never had one right number. Not one. What are the odds?
     He buys these tickets even though we swore off gambling years ago, following an afternoon at the casino with my mother. While we continued to drop quarters into stingy slot machines, my mother's machine was spewing money at an astonishing rate. "Oh, my!" I heard her say more than once. Later, totaling our losses, we vowed, Never Again! We agreed: The next time someone mentions the casino we would stay home, send a check to the food shelf, and be money ahead.
     My mother loved the casinos. Years before, when Mystic Lake opened, my husband and I met her and my stepfather in Bloomington and they followed us to Shakopee. As we entered the parking lot, I checked my rearview mirror to make sure they were right behind us. I saw my mother catch sight of the huge facility. Her eyes twinkled so brightly, I was nearly blinded.
     When Mom turned seventy, I told her we would drive to Brainerd to take them out to eat. "Name the place," I said. "The sky's the limit."
     "I hear they have a nice buffet at the casino," she said.
     "The casino, Mom? Let's go someplace fancy." She persisted in the sweet way she had and we made arrangements to meet at the Mille Lacs casino. Somehow, we pulled into the parking lot at the exact same time. Mom drove straight to the main entrance. We followed. Immediately, the front door of the casino opened and a uniformed woman emerged, saying, "Janet, welcome!"
     "You hear they have a nice buffet, Mom? That woman knows your name." The daughter of a friend, Mom explained.
     No sooner had we taken our seats than a man dressed in a suit and tie stopped at the table to wish Mom a happy birthday. Mom introduced him–the restaurant manager. "You hear they have a good buffet at the casino?" I repeated. "You know the manager." She pooh-poohed me, explaining he was a friend of a friend.
     After lunch, we gave Mom rolls of nickels and quarters so she could try her luck. She made a bee-line to a slot machine, throwing the name over her shoulder, a Diamond-something-or-other. She pulled another stool alongside hers so her husband could pull the arm down while she dropped in the money. I watched their synchronized teamwork. "Mom, you can't fool me. You've been here before."
     "Oh, honey," she said, but she didn't look at me. Thank goodness. Her eyes were lit up brighter than the lights in the casino as she and her husband worked their magic. Ch-ching, ch-ching, I heard over and over.
     My mother has been gone eight years this week. Appropriately, the year after she passed away, my husband and I met her friends at the casino for a memorial buffet lunch. We laughed about Mom's fondness for slot machines. How she kept her gambling money in a special drawer. We giggled about her sure-fire system: Mom shared her winnings with her favorite nuns, members of a cloistered order who had prayed for Mom's intentions for over 40 years. She religiously sent them 10 percent of her winnings and (Hedging her bets?) 10 percent of her losses.
     Win or lose, Mom had the right idea. Odds are it earned her a place at a heavenly shot machine.