The gift I couldn’t find
Years after that moment in the museum, life looked different.
I was no longer a student.
I was a husband and a father.
My kids were learning chess.
And as I watched them, I wasn't just watching a game.
I was watching how they think.
Chess taught them things early.
How to plan.
How to think ahead.
How to read situations.
If this happened, then what?
If the situation changed, what's next?
Chess is a scenario-based game.
Those same patterns and ways of thinking showed up everywhere in life.
Because real life doesn't happen in a controlled environment.
We aren't always engaging with people who think like us,
who come from the same background,
or who share similar lived experiences.
And that's when it hit me.
It's one thing to think two or three moves ahead on a board.
It's another thing to do that in environments where every variable is different.
That was the world they were growing up in.
That was the world I wanted them to be ready for.
So when I watched them learning the game of chess, I didn't just see pieces moving on a board.
I saw them developing skills they were going to carry with them.
It was in that moment that I thought:
If they were already learning all of this,
what would happen if you layered something else on top of it?
What if it wasn't just strategy,
but also art, history, and identity?
And who else could benefit?
Now it became:
“Who is this piece?”
“Where does this come from?”
“What does it represent?”
Now they weren't just playing a game.
They were engaging with something deeper.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized this wasn't just about my children.
Because every child deserves the opportunity to see themselves in what they learn.
To feel connected to it.
To question it.
To explore it.
And for me, that mattered.
It wasn't just about learning how to play.
It was about learning how to see.
Our family carries multiple stories.
My wife is Indigenous. I'm first-generation Canadian of Caribbean descent, and our children carry both.
So I started thinking about what I could place in front of them.
Not something generic.
Something that carried meaning.
Something that matched the depth of what they were already learning at home.
But when I started looking for something that combined:
Strategy
Art
History
Identity
All in one place, the options became very limited.
The more I looked, the clearer it became.
What I had in mind didn't exist.
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